My parents are in the middle of moving for the first time in 30 years. Since I love anything that involves planning, organizing, and decorating I’ve been there every weekend to help. One of the major tasks I took on was scrapping and repainting the cellar doors. According to the real estate agent peeling paint is the kiss of death when trying to sell a house.

There I was in the middle of day two, hour 3 when my mother looks at the half scrapped doors and says “yeah that’s fine start painting.” Well the paint wasn’t all scrapped off. And the doors were still dirty. Every time I put another coat of paint on more dirt got onto the brush and mixed in with the paint. It was a mess. I was horrified at the prospect of doing something half-assed.

Then I had an even worse thought if the  new owners wanted to do it right I was making it much harder for them. My half-assed job was only going to create more work down the road just to give something an improved appearance so no one would notice the nitty gritty. I immediately thought of the workplace and how often we do patch jobs which result in more work in the end. And how it’s not always someone else who ends up with the shoddy work because it often comes right back to hurt the one who did it in the first place. Do it right the first time.