Garage Progress

Apparently, my grasp of home improvement projects falls somewhere between my mastery of airlines pricing patterns and my understanding of urban youth slang. It’s not the home improvement labor that screws me over, it’s the project scope. I always try and guess how long something’s going to take and miss the mark by a huge margin. I figured I’d need four days to reroute two garage door tracks and install garage door openers: two days to do some setup and prep on my own and then two days with Dad D to polish off the details.

I was wrong. It’ll probably take 15 weeks.

That’s not to say Dad D and I didn’t make great progress last week. Dad D is a tornado of productivity. If he’s involved, progress is inevitable. We finished the tracks for one of the two doors, put insulation and drywall up along most of the garage walls, fixed the concrete on the front stairs, fixed a faucet, re-caulked the downstairs tub, and completed a whole heap of other small house improvements.

But the garage doors proved to be a bit too complicated for my four day estimation. In addition to those doors, I hope to get the walls taped and painted by the new year… but I’m probably underestimating that time commitment by a factor of twelve.

16 thoughts on “Garage Progress

  • 11/30/2009 at 12:10 pm
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    In scientific research, guess how long it will take, then multiply by two and move to the next higher unit of time. That experiment is maybe an hour of work? It should be done in two days. Two weeks? Expect a report in four months.

    I think there’s a word for this tendency to wildly underestimate the time it will take to do things. One of the .. biases.

    Anyway, it’s totally normal.

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  • 11/30/2009 at 12:38 pm
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    Wow, I haven’t heard of this before but it makes a lot of sense. I especially love the modification of the unit.

    I wonder where else one could use this strategy. Perhaps in estimating expected food servings at a buffet where me and my friends are present. 2 slices of lasagna per person? more like 4 baking trays of lasagna per person.

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  • 11/30/2009 at 2:13 pm
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    I also think it’s crazy to think you’ll be able to give an accurate guess on timing for something you’ve never done before.

    I’m glad to hear that garage doors aren’t an easy DIY project. We need a new garage door and this confirms that it’s something Tom and I shouldn’t do ourselves.

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  • 11/30/2009 at 6:00 pm
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    How about you forget the doors all together and make a garage entrance forcefield?

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  • 11/30/2009 at 6:10 pm
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    I’m pretty sure this post wins the “Best Introductory Sentence” Award.

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  • 11/30/2009 at 10:15 pm
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    That lasagna servings parallel is the best thing you’ve ever done.

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  • 12/1/2009 at 11:17 pm
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    Fo shizzle my boy. Home Repairs are sick hard yo. I’s been pimpin my crib like no bodies business and its mad whack. I’m Audi3000.

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  • 12/1/2009 at 11:23 pm
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    I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with chautauqua airlines.

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  • 12/2/2009 at 11:58 am
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    If you’re not using a chalk line, 5′ level, and knowledge of a 3-4-5 triangle you’re probably working too hard. With the right tools, this should be a 1 day project for both doors and openers.

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  • 12/2/2009 at 12:08 pm
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    For normal doors, I think I’d agree. What’s tricky here is that I’m extending the tracks so it’ll be a high ceiling door. This has resulted in a few unique problems like how to set the torsion bar so that it’ll properly offset the door weight with the extended cables, and whether a regular door opener would work at all. I’m thinking it won’t, so I’ll have to get high ceiling door openers instead.

    If these new door openers work, and they should… then patching up the second door shouldn’t take more than another day or two.

    That said, I don’t have a 5′ level. I should get one, it would make alignment easier by far.

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  • 12/2/2009 at 12:24 pm
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    Cool, I’m glad to see you going DIY on everything possible. You will save a lot of money and learn a lot.
    I thought for sure you would have done a complete layout in Solidworks, then printed out full size templates on the plotter.

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