A Lesson in Getting Started…

A few weeks ago, I had a guy come over to my house to do a little handyman work. I needed my deck stained and my front porch painted. Both were really showing signs of wear. I was afraid if we didn’t do something quickly, we’d end up having to do some more significant repairs later on.

The guy did an excellent job, my deck looked great and my front porch was as bright and clean and as freshly painted as the day we moved in. The only problem was, now with my porch looking so good, it made the rest of the house look like crap. I didn’t see that the rest of my house needed work until I saw it in comparison to my new porch.

Here’s an interesting question. If I knew how much work there really was to do, should I have ever gotten started painting my front porch in the first place? If I had known the full scope of the repairs, would it have been better to wait until I was ready to do the whole job at once? If I had waited to do the whole job at once, would we even have realized there was a bigger problem?

Since I decided to go ahead and get started painting, I took a risk that we’d find problems we weren’t prepared to fix. If we had chosen to do nothing, we’d have risked ending up with even more costly repairs, due to our neglect. Would it have been better to just maintain the status quo? Did we do the right thing getting started… even though our house isn’t as complete as we’d really like? Is knowing the depth of your problem a good thing or a bad thing?