These past several weeks are showing signs of more great things to come. The Facade Project is underway and the construction crews are busy tearing off layers of dis-functional facades. If I had more time, it would be interesting to watch the process of dismantling of someone else’s work some fifty or sixty years ago. This brings me to a conversation I had with a customer this afternoon. We talked about costs of materials and labor in making a house a home. My real pet peeve is walking into a home and seeing such dis-function wherever I look. The improvements that some people make are a bit scary. The media promotes doing improvements yourself so that you can buy their products. This is just another form of convincing the public that they can do anything–for less. We all have the ability to learn, but learning how to do something, and do it well takes time. I would rather spend three times as much time to get something done right rather than doing an amateur job. Nothing is ever truly perfect but as long as it falls into the realm of attempted perfection, then it’s OK.
In my closing comment with my customer, I said, “I would rather buy something that has had nothing done at a discount rather than the same price for something that has to un-done before it can be re-done.” Time is money along with the stress of trying to figure out what someone else was thinking and doing when the “improvements” were made.
Back to Downtown…I’m sure the contractors that are working on the store fronts are having the same thoughts that I had when I started working on the interior of my building. I’m sure they are wondering how many layers of attempted “improvements” they will have to scrape off before they find the original structure. As each month and year goes by, I am continually delighted to be downtown.
