Getting All Our Ducts in a Row!

Finishing a basement is a major undertaking. Especially when you plan to do the bulk of the work yourself, on top of your extremely demanding job. But this is what my husband has chosen to do, and despite the inconvenience and the extended timeline, I'm thankful.

Contrary to popular opinion, things are getting done down there. Chris spends most of every weekend in the basement, doing a lot of head scratching and a fair amount of banging, and by Monday morning he has a head full of steam and is ready to take a vacation day and press on. Such is the case today.

The only problem with Chris doing the job on his own is also the biggest blessing of him doing it on his own. He has an obsession with doing things right. This takes time. A lot more time than it would take someone that we could hire to do the work, who really doesn't care whether or not the bones of the job are sound, as long as it looks good. For the last week Chris has been working on bulkheads, and the other night he had an epiphany. If he just rerouted some of the ductwork, we wouldn't have nearly as many unsightly bulkheads in our family room. No big deal, he thought. I'll just move this over there, and then connect this to that, and Voila! Unfortunately, getting to "Voila!" invariably involves one step forward and two steps back, several minor injuries, and a fair amount of language that I don't usually hear coming out of my sweet husband's mouth. This time he found something done wrong by the original builder that would have inevitably caused us problems down the road, and I can hear him down there now, banging away, making things right. In fact, I'm typing quickly because I know that any minute now, he'll call my name and I'll need to go play assistant.

When all is said and done, I'm so glad Chris is doing this basement the way he wants it done, because I know he is obsessed with getting it right. At least once a day he declares he just doesn't know how to do something, but he always figures it out, and it is always well done. We are going to have an awesome space down there when it is finished, thanks to my obsessive hubby.

As a quick post script, I'm adding a picture of a job we had done last week that Chris did not do himself (although he did have to jump in once and fix something the workers screwed up). We had drainage put in along the side of the house and a stone walkway installed. I'm so happy with it! It really dresses up the house, and I don't have to mow the weeds that grow along that wall anymore, or tramp through the muck that collects by the gate! Love it!

Correction: Chris read this post and his only criticism was with my vocabulary. He thought I may have used the word "obsessed" too often, and suggested I substitute the words "committed" or "persistent".  That's my husband — always obsessed with the details! (wink wink!)