The classic 80-20 rule posits that you can get 80% of the results in 20% of the time. The last 20% takes 80% of the time or effort. I’m not quite sure if that applies to a project like this one, but the long deceleration is unmistakable. After the first week of August I almost immediately dropped from spending 40+ hours per week working on the house to spending an average of 12 or so. Furthermore, as we’d long known, most home improvement projects take longer if you’re living in the home. We can no longer just leave tools and materials in place, bathing in a pool of sawdust until the next working day. Now messes and hazards must be contained, and working on anything generally involves moving 7 other things first.

Amazingly, we still haven’t passed our final inspection. In fact, we’re essentially no closer than we were on the first of August. The only thing in the way of that inspection is finishing the stairs (including handrails) and we have never even considered working on that project since move-in. There are a hundred things more successfully vying for attention. Some work prevents future work, such as finishing exterior covers to prevent weather damage to exposed wood. Some work is also weather dependent, requiring warmth or lack of precipitation to get it done. Other projects just have such a substantial impact on daily quality of life that they demand to climb the priority list (closet shelves, towel racks, and bedroom doors spring to mind).

Though we’re clearly no longer working a second full-time job in construction, I can’t really say we’ve completely returned to “normal” yet either. Most evenings we contend with the mundanities of homework, meal prep, house cleaning, bill paying, and the like, but still interspersed with the occasional project burst. We’ll have a spurt of energy (or of impatience) that prompts us to install some closet doors or move a half ton of stuff from the garage storage to the basement storage. Last week I came home from work one night, threw on my grubby work wear and scurried into the attic. (Wading around in 18″ of insulation I was glad for the practice I got years ago installing a bath fan in my dad’s place.) I pulled out the duct terminal for our bath fans, took them outside in the pitch dark, and went up on a diesel-powered boom lift to reinstall it from the outside, now that the final sheathing was prepared. Hanging off that boom at 7:00 at night in 40 degree weather with a high pitched screaming dremel tool I found myself thinking “I can’t believe I’m still doing this!”

We have taken just a few more days off here or there to do small project bursts. Two weekends ago turned into a three day… no wait, now a four day weekend to finish up all the exterior siding, soffits, and fascia. It looks mighty fine and it should keep the weather at bay through the winter. But my aching muscles and disoriented equilibrium (from swaying at the end of a 40 foot pole for four days) are tell me loudly that enough is enough. I’m ready to let the long tail extend a little longer and enjoy some quieter, less intense days to come.