I think I will use one of my many personal projects that
get out of hand. Last year I built an addition onto our home because I gave my
office to our oldest daughter and we had a baby on the way. It was going to be
partially my office and half for the baby. However, it has since become my
office/rec room completely; my little fortress of solitude if you will.
In the
process of drywalling I encountered an issue with the doorway and the electrical
during a city inspection. Since the new door was in the old exterior wall, it
was a load bearing area. So I had to include load bearing headers that the
framing for was not there at all. This meant removing more existing drywall,
installing the jack studs and header and then patching more drywall to cover
this all back up. The other issue was some recessed lighting I had all
installed. They needed electrical boxes, not just nuts and electrical tape, at
every patch junction; 6 locations. So I had to run another lead wire run and
rewire the entire line into it so where they met would be inside the boxes.
Had I been a real contractor I would have been aware of
these local codes (not something I dealt with back in rural Nebraska) and I
would have already planned these activities into the project. The work pushed
me back a few days labor, which translated to three weeks delay in the overall project
time. There were other cases of things like this that overall made the project five
months longer than I planned.
In the end the timing still worked out, I was done with
the exterior before it got too cold and finished the interior by my daughter’s
first birthday. Knowing what I know now I would have contracted out the
concrete and finishing (drywall and paint) work. Those two areas caused me the
most pain; physically and financially.
Relating this to our course, I would underscore the importance of understanding the time requirements for all the parts of a project BEFORE starting it. Either knowing them first hand from experience, or working with experienced people of the field who can give you real usable data.
