Working Hard or Hardly Working

Sometimes I hear people talk about working with contractors, and how frustrating it is, and I'm jealous.  I wish I had a contractor to get mad at.  I wish I had a contractor to blame for my homely troubles.  Back in the day when we were working on our living room, we got close to the end and got all excited and went and bought ourselves a couch.  BRAND NEW.  But when RC Willey delivered it we were still in the middle of refinishing the floor and so we had to have the delivery guy kind of stack the couch on its side in the other room, wedged between some piles of who knows what and a box of old bed sheets.  We were like "Sorry, we thought the floor would be done by now." and the delivery guy said "Contractors!"  And were were like, "Uh, yeah.  Darn those contractors."  But of course there were no contractors.  Only us.  It is always only us.

Remodeling is fun.  At the end.  Right after the drywall goes up and it is finally time to paint and then put in flooring and decorate.  Even the drywall is kinda fun, cuz a few hours work makes so much difference and you know that the really fun stuff is right around the corner.

The beginning is fun too, when you get to plan and dream and look at catalogs and walk through Ikea and think and plot and draw out floor plans and pin beautiful rooms on pinterest.

 Even the demolition is fun when you get to smash things with big hammers, and knock down ugly walls and get really, really dirty, and take out all your frustration on stubborn pieces of plaster and wood.

It is just the middle that is painfully boring.  This part

that seems to stretch on into eternity while nothing seems to be happening and your husband spends every free day he can get and after hours and hours of work he is exhausted and there isn't even anything to show for it.  And it looks like you should be ready to put up drywall, but first a wire has to be run here, and a hole has to be drilled there, and floors have to be reinforced and joists have to be replaced.  There is drilling and screwing and cutting and cursing and hours spent crawling around under the house and STILL NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT.  And it stretches on and on and on until a person thinks they might actually Die from Remodeling.  And you wonder if the end will ever come?  Will it?  WILL IT??

If I had a contractor, I would so be writing him an angry email right now.