Projects have a way of growing on me. I imagine a particular project taking a given amount of time, effort, and resources, and it never turns out that way.

“I’m going to use the orbital brush cleaner to get the kitchen floor sparkling and then put a couple of coats of protective finish on it,” I say before a day off. “It shouldn’t take me more than three hours.” In reality, I’m off by 66%: it takes me five hours.

“I’m going to replace the front sillcock. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, maximum.” Lunch time comes and I’m still wrestling with it.

I look into the future at projects K and I hope to complete: remodel rebuild the kitchen; remodel the master bathroom; landscape the back yard. These are not minor endeavors. These are things that I anticipate taking weeks, which means they will take months.

The problem is, once I get started, I don’t want to cut corners. At least that’s what I tell myself: I end up doing that anyway, but it makes me grit my teeth to think about it, and I know there’s more to the extended projects than my perfectionism.

It all comes down to inexperience. Except for plumbing, no project intimidates me, but I know my lack of experience will make the job three times as long as it should require. Experience has taught me that, for I used to think my home improvement inexperience would double the time.

Our living room is turning into one such project. “We’ll just pull out the furniture, repaint the walls, polish the floor, and put the new furniture back in.” If only it were that simple.