Old house blues

If you're a perfectionist, just know fixing up an old house is going to wear on your last nerve, especially if you're living there while the work is going on.

The floors and ceilings are parallel but not perpendicular to the walls. The floors slope in different directions. You hang a door and find uneven spacing between the door and floor and door and headers. You put the trim on and there are bulges and gaps. There is no such thing as a 90-degree angle or plumb-ness. You find unexpected remnants of structures behind the sheetrock and in the foundation that you suddenly have to work around.

The first few days, I came home from work completely unsuspecting. Then I developed a severe pavlovian resistance to coming home, afraid of what I will find. I was hypersensitive to every little thing that wasn't quite right.

Now, I'm learning to just chill. That electrical outlet hung at a strange angle was just until they could figure out how to cut away the beam to fit it straight. I'm learning the work happens in stages. Just because the door is hanging a little loose on the first day isn't cause to go off on the contractors.

There are adjustments made throughout the process until you have the finished project. And, as mysterious and daunting as it seems to me, if you know what you're doing and know what to expect, the early awkwardness of it is not so scary.

My dad compared it to the first draft of a story---if you worry too much about making every word perfect before moving to the next, you may never finish.