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Bad planning... Worse execution.

2007-05-25

Good morning Boys and Girls.

This month is zipping by at the speed of 24 hours per day and the hours, unfathomably, are going by even faster than that. I've accomplished far less than I'd planned to do during the month but have decided to get my ass in gear over the holiday weekend, and catch up... (since I'm out of mustard.)

(snare drum flam please)

First, gutters around the front entrance and above the sliding door and over the deck in back. I bought the stuff on Thursday which went like this:

Wednesday evening I went to the local hardware, having decided that if the price difference wasn't too much, I'd rather support them. Pulled all the gutter material and downspouts easily, then started grabbing the connectors and supporting paraphernalia. Nope. They were out of three or four items and it was a different brand than I'd ever seen before, meaning I couldn't run to get the missing pieces at one of the big box joints. Damn. Put it all away and went home.

Thursday morning. Stopped at Mennard's, a smaller regional Home Depot style chain. Waited a half hour for help to see if there was more stuff in stock overhead since many of their bins were empty. Nada.

Worked a while and bopped into Lowes. The less expensive line looked fine and I loaded up my big lumber-carrying cart with the stuff. Oh shit. No connectors. An employee said "You know sir, the other line is really better and it's only about ten percent more." Hmmm. Okay. So he helped me unload and reload, with me not paying any attention at all to the individual piece prices.

At the checkout? Well, when she was halfway through ringing me up and I looked at the screen and saw I was already well over my budget for the entire job, I sheepishly said. "Uh.. wait. Cancel this order. This is way more expensive than I'd realized." It was. I looked at a simple gutter connector; eight bucks compared to $2.49 in the other line. Why hadn't I looked more carefully?

"You know sir, we have a less expensive brand. This is the extreme-weather stuff," the cashier said helpfully. I nodded, apologized again and went back to restock all the stuff.

Late afternoon. Home Depot. In and out in ten minutes having grabbed all the stuff in a brand I'd used before, and at at a price about ten percent less than I'd budgeted.

If time is money? I wasted a bunch of money.


Be good to everyone.

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Barnabus (2007-05-25)
Hey!!! when you get done I've got this little job.....hehe

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