The adage goes, “To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs”. In the remodeling business, this is an often overlooked truth. To remake anything is an act of destruction, and then construction. Both of which entail making a mess. Cutting, sanding, painting/staining, varnishing are all intrinsically messy jobs that all have to be done to start and finish any project. So, to a large extent, remodeling at its base is all about mess containment and control. On many projects, there’s more to the control of dirt and dust than the actual construction. Partly this is accomplished by the use of actual barriers- there are great products now that we use to help accomplish this (note the plastic lined temporary walls in the photo). But part of the mess control is to work in an organized and planful way with tradesman that understand that we are guests in someone’s home. The work-site may be someone’s living room or kitchen. It isn’t out in an unoccupied house or building-it might be right in the middle of where a family lives. So, sometimes something as simple as taking your time to perform your trade is all that’s necessary to help keep things clean. Faster isn’t usually better- especially when someone’s sanding something in the middle of your house! And, truthfully, working in a planful manner is almost always faster in the end- less mess to clean up at the end, less damage to things that weren’t in our scope of work, and an overall better result-
