Doubling the bill

I have been in my house since late September of 2000. In that time I have put a lot of work into restoring it. In fact I have probably put more work in than most people would be willing to do. A fact a good friend of mine just reminded me of. He routinely buys houses with his brother as projects to make money on. When they flip, or re-hab a house they do it on the cheap. Not that they do poor work or use low quality materials, no they just don’t spend a lot of time and energy making it look really nice. They make it decent and sellable. I on the other hand spend 200 hours stripping and reconditioning the woodwork in a single room where I could have sanded and painted it in about 30. I patch the plaster in most cases, I try to build things that fit with my houses overall character, and I have to do it all while I continue to live there.

But it is also something I take some pride in and it is my home so I want it to be to my standard. I would rather wait and do it right than just do something to make it acceptable. That said for the longest time I have pretty much made all of the decisions and really been the only person involved. People have helped me with projects here and there but really I always decided how to do it. Well that is all changing now as I am now married. For the most part RG is hard to get involved in house projects. She has no real interest in working on the house, hates going to places like the home depot, and generally (and surprisingly for her) hasn’t had strong opinions in the area. I am trying to get her more involved though, because this is our house and she should be happy with and feel like she helped create it.

So the next project is our one and only bathroom. So I have many constraints here. First I can’t take it out of service for very long. So it will have to be done in stages. Second it is incredibly small. And third we have a tight budget. My original plan was to create a very simple bathroom that would be similar to something from the 1920s. White tile, pedestal sink, built in cabinet, maybe even a claw foot tub. I dropped the claw foot tub a long time ago in favor of a modern tube with a tiled shower. But I still figured I could do it cheaply because the tile would be standard 4 inch tile, the toilet was purchased, and the sink would be cheap. But then I got my wife involved. While I am happy she is taking an interest in the bathroom, her tastes are more expensive than mine. After an initial trip to some stores her version of the bathroom would cost double what mine would.

She also tends to like more modern styles even though the house was built in 1905 and I have been bring back as much of the original character as I can, so this is a bit of a clash. But do to the size of the bathroom we cannot use many of the elements she wants to. For instance there is simply no premade vanity that will fit. So now we have worked back and forth and I think we have a design we can both be a happy with. Some nicer tiles than I was going to use, I am going to make a vanity that fits incorporating some of her design likes but that retains the character of the house, and the hardware will be a mix of old and new styles. Both of us agree on a modern bath/shower though. So in the long run we will get a bathroom that is far from my vision, but something that is a little of both of use, and while it is more expensive it won’t be 3 times the cost…. Just double.

Heads Down

So I have been a little slow getting my blogs posted lately. I had ½ of them written but I was just too busy at work to actually get them posted on line. Most I had written while on flights. The only time I have had lately to get a break. For the past 2 months I have been a project that is in some trouble. They are 150% behind their time line, and I think that is only going to get worse. Luckily the project was not run by my company we are only responsible for a small portion of the project. But now as they are getting close to go-live and are still having some serious troubles we were asked to help and somehow I got roped into it.

So I was asked to build some reports that married SAP data and Legacy data to validate the client’s conversion processes. Normally we train the client functional experts to do this so they can create whatever they need on the fly. Then they build reports of ½ dozen fields at a time. This client however only wanted a set of excel sheets with magic buttons that gave them a yes the data is good or no it is not response without much work. And they wanted it fast, for several very complex data objects. What we should have said is that it simply wasn’t practical, or at the very least we should use a more robust platform than excel. What we said, or rather a manager who is not me said, is sure. So project management promises and I am tasked with delivering.

So for the last 9 weeks I have had my head down and my fingers smoking on the keyboard trying to build these tools/reports for the client. It took nearly twice as long and the client will have no way to fix them if they break or update them for future waves, but I am almost finished with the assignment and able to breathe a little more again. I have done 55-70 hour weeks before, even for a few weeks straight, but 9 weeks straight was a little much. Suffice to say, that manage is now on my “Do not work with again” list. Funniest part about it, they threw him off the project and kept me! Oi… Hopefully it is on to better things.

Bull Dog

At some point in the not so far off future I would like to get a dog. I’m really not sure what kind of dog. But I was thinking Bull Dog. Everything I have read about them is positive when it comes to training, disposition, and general characteristics. They are ugly. I know this. But I think they are so ugly they are pretty cool looking actually. So I thought it would be fun to get one. The wife though seems opposed to a bull dog. I don’t know why. Her sister also seems to have something against these lovable scamps. So I guess it is back to the drawing board.

My favorite dog growing up was a sheltie. But ours was a bit of a freak he was nearly 30% larger than they are supposed to grow and ran like a grey hound. No joke. When we had him at my grandma’s farm he would run alongside of cars down the 1 mile drive way. We clocked him one time around 30 mph! Amazing. The only problem with shelties is that they need a lot of grooming and they sometimes can bark a lot. So that may be a pain.

Another option I thought of was a Jack Russell Terrier. A good friend had one when I was in high school and it was a cool dog. But I think it was an exception. The reading I have done lately says they can be a bit high strung. I want a pretty laid back, medium sized dog. I certainly don’t want something that looks like a rat or is only 4 inches tall. I still circle back to Bull Dog. Of course I don’t want to pay for a pure bread so chances are we will just go to a shelter or last chance and adopt a mutt. Who knows maybe we will get lucky.