Go It Alone or Get Help?

Gobs of grout and crooked walls.

 

Involved in all of my moving plans was the renovation of the kitchen and bathrooms of my new condo and the repainting of the whole place. This is not work I am qualified to do, therefore I had to hire other people to do it for me. Do I wish I could have done it myself—yes! Could I have done so? Nope.

My husband, despite his economics Ph.D., is a very artistic person. He's got a great eye for color and line and has terrific design sense. He was in charge of designing the kitchen and bathrooms, giving me veto authority. I'm a handier person than he is. I understand the mechanics of fixing things, even if I can't always do it myself. (Traditional gender roles? Who needs them?) so it was my job to see his design implemented. It's also a lot easier for me to do this since I work from home and my husband has a regular office job.

So, for the past month I've been dealing with the construction company we hired to do all the work and the subcontractors they sent over to my home to do the actual work. To say that it's been a nightmare would be understate the issue, I'm sad to say. I've had to manage the two men (one for the kitchen, one for the bathrooms) from making sure they arrived to work on time, to telling them what to do and making sure they did it in a professional manner—not accepting shoddy workmanship (I've had them redo so many pieces of the job, it's ridiculous!)

The thing is, there's no way for one person to be able to be an expert at everything. The construction company sent over one man to rip out all the fixtures in my bathrooms, retile the shower, install a lighting fixture, and do all the plumbing. He's had to be a general worker, demolition crew, tile expert, electrician and plumber. No one person can be an expert in all those areas and so I've had to work with this man to try and figure out the right way to do all of this and sometimes it took more than one try to get it right. 

Likewise, not every author can be a writer, editor, cover designer, formatter and expert marketer, we need to hire specialists to do the different pieces for us. Does this mean that one person cannot do it all? No, not at all. It's just that they then have to have the patience to do things two or three times before they figure out the right way to do it.

Or they could just hire experts to do each piece for them.

Guess which one I advocate for?  

I'm happy to say that after the man comes back on Monday to install edging tiles to the inset shelf that was built for the shower in my bathroom (because we didn't realize that they would be needed and instead of these tiles, he just filled in the edges with globs of grout which looks awful), it will all be done! The apartment is painted (by professional painters), professional movers brought my furniture and belongings in on Thursday, and I can now rest easy knowing that I only have 75 more boxes to unpack (about half of which are filled with books, which are quick and easy to unpack).

Have a great weekend everyone and do some relaxing for me!