Key Peninsula Discovered!

To Know or Not to Know

Have you ever noticed . . .
. . . that sometimes you’re really glad you didn’t know then what you know now? Because if you had known it then, you would have been too scared or nervous or intimidated to proceed with something you really wanted to do?

Or, as in our case, if we’d known then what we know now, I guess we would have gone ahead anyway, but we would have started stressing out way sooner than necessary. I’m thinking of the total disruption of our living space recently as we had our kitchen floor replaced. Actually, it was the kitchen plus the adjoining laundry room and pantry. Well, then we decided to put the same tile in the downstairs half-bath. And of course, as long as we were at it, why not tile the master bath floor and the vanity top in our third bathroom?
If we had known how long it would take, or how thoroughly dusty everything would end up being; or what it would really be like living a whole week with our stove in the garage and our washer and dryer in the dining room . . . or having to keep track for two weeks of which bathroom’s toilet and sinks were usable . . . well, let’s just say that 3 weeks of this chaos was way more than enough, thank you very much!

With my husband’s schedule what it was during this time, it fell to me to try to work at home in order to supervise this creative, but dusty and cluttered undertaking. Fortunately, I could wear heavy-duty earphones and step outside to make phone calls. And our extra microwave appeared faithfully from under the dust each evening to help us revive our carry-out cuisine of the day. I was reminding myself hourly that this, like everything in life, was all only temporary, but I also kept thinking, “I had no idea it would be like this!”

Of course, we do LOVE our new tile floors, and it’s great that our house value has just increased. But knowing ahead of time what we know now, thereby adding anxious anticipation to the actual 3-week experience, would have sent me way beyond sanity (where I probably spend a certain amount of time anyway, but that’s another topic altogether). Worry, of course, can be far worse than reality.
So aside from my obvious advice that anyone attempting a similar project tackle only one room at a time, instead of four, I can offer this: the remodeling experience compares to that of childbirth: the pain will pass, and the happy result is yours everlasting (or until the dishwasher leaks again).

So if you ever find yourself saying, “If I’d only known then what I know now” . . . well, maybe it’s better that you didn’t.

By the way, the highly skilled tile layer who gave us such wonderful results (and put up with my varying stress levels) is Duane Veitch of North Tacoma. If you would like to talk to Duane about your tile project, please contact me (253-380-0096) and I will be happy to pass along his contact information.

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