lukas wrote:Busy with the house ... something I can totally relate to nowadays! When thinking of what I've done for, say, the last week, it always feels so little - and then I look at the garden or the house and smile because it looks so much better than before
This is apparently a common phenomenon. We have been experiencing it for 6 years now. When we began I thought it would take 5 years for us to do the main reconstruction and remodeling work, but I didn't know then that we would have to replaster all of the walls of a 4-story house. It looks like we will finally meet our goal after 6 years, one year later than planned, but that's fine.
Often, when I look at the unfinished 3rd floor I think, "Where did the time go, what have we been doing?" But then we go back and look at the pictures that we have taken over the last 6 years and we know what we have been doing.
Taking lots and lots of pictures of your work, of the condition before and after, of you working on things makes it all much more satisfying because we tend to forget how bad things were when we began, or how much we have improved them. I have a complete archive of pictures, simply on the hard drive (with backups, of course) arranged by day, from July 2005 until July 2011, day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year. Then when I wonder where the time went I can just go back and look. It's also useful because you know how long ago you installed the bathroom sink or the electric wiring in the wall. If you take pictures of where the electrical distribution boxes and so on are you will also be very thankful later when you want to drill a hole in the wall and can't remember where you mustn't drill.
In any case, good luck to everyone who has undertaken a project like this or who just owns a house. It takes perseverance and a good bit of humour to survive the effort.
