One of the last things that needs to be accomplished before listing the house for sale, is to restain the deck. We had four long boards that needed to be replaced, so we bought the boards, stain and deck screws. A few days earlier, we had washed the deck.
With a sudden temporary warm up, I ran home from work early. The plan was simple… replace four boards and stain the deck. Warm and rain free for 24 hours, it was our perfect opportunity.
Except, the old deck screw heads were ultra-soft. Each head stripped when trying to remove. No worries, I had a special tool to remove stripped screw heads. Except, it didn’t work. Ninety minutes in, I had two screws removed. Finally came up with a plan: drill holes around each screw, use a needle nosed pliers to remove the rest of the wood around each screw, the grab the screw with a vice grips. Now slow but steady progress, but with 100 plus screws to remove, we missed the window of rain free warmth. Success, but success delayed. We will now have the house listed a few days later than our March 1st timeline.
Plan your work, and work your plan. But even with contingency planning for unexpected variables, sometimes you need to amend the plan. There was a time when I would have been frustrated with today’s delays. But no longer… still moving forward, still going to get there, another day closer to the beach.