A belated happy New Year to you all! I've just about got over my operation and my brother is doing very well with his new kidney. The convalescence has been a good excuse for a couple of months but now I've got to focus on the house again. Even so, I've not posted here for a few weeks as there was really nothing to say; the weather has generally been so bad that I have been avoiding the idea of going out in the garden - it's just cold, wet and muddy.
However, I know from past experience that to make progress on a large job like a house, you have to "eat an elephant" - i.e. do a little bit at a time, but just keep on doing it. So I need a plan and a set of targets; I'm hoping that by writing them down here they will cause me to actually do them, whereas a written list at home is easily lost (and I do lose things easily anyway!). Also, a written list can be a bit depressing (especially if you put in too much detail) as it just looks insurmountable and has the opposite effect to what is intended.
So, here's my realistic list for what I want to do on this house and garden this year:
a. Finish the small brick wall and the barbecue stand at the back of the garden
b. Get some more limestone and finish the wall down the side of the house/lawn
c. Get some more limestone and do the other end of that wall, where I want to make a ramp up to the lawn with a retaining wallin front of the shed.
d. Finish decorating indoors (includes lime plaster repairs)
e. Plaster the walls of the wardrobe
f. Fit the bath panel properly
g. Refurbish at least one of the sash windows
h. Construct an 8' x 12' shed in the side garden
i. Construct a store (for camping equipment and rarely used tools etc) round the back
j. Repaint various bits outside where the black paint is peeling off (why?)
Now, I've been pretty brief on the detail and left out completely a lot of small jobs but even so it slightly depresses me. However, the next stage is to decide the priorities and hence what to do in each month (trying to pretend that the weather will be great). I've also omitted a promise to my oldest brother to go and help him do a job on his equally old house for a few days.
The main priority is the shed as that will give me a home for all my tools and also allow me to do dirty jobs (like sanding a door) when it's wet. In fact the first job then is to do the retaining wall as the lawn and shed are higher than the ground around the house. Of course, the shed is an outside job so all I can do on that right now is to plan and wait for some decent weather. So the next jobs to be tackled are the internal ones like the re-decorating - somehow I find I have difficulty in mustering any enthusiasm for that but I know that once I start it won't seem so bad.
All this makes me realise just how much work I got done in Nov 2010 - June 2011, how well I did the project management and how committed I must have been then: I think I worked 9 or 10 hour days, six days out of seven in most weeks, initially in very cold weather (remember that snow?) and then it brightened up in the Spring. Looking back I am impressed with my own performance but I doubt that I could do it again.
