The Decider

This week it felt like house stuff shifted into 5th gear.  We were chugging along in second, purring past friendly cyclists at 20, maybe 25 miles an hour, down happy little residential streets.  You know, how I roll.  Then suddenly we're on the Autobahn, there's no speed limit, and I'm white-knuckling it as we blow past Maseratis and what-have-you.  And since that likely sounds like a fantastic situation to some of you, let me tell you, it was a little much for me.

Now to roll back on the hyperbole a bit, all I really had to do was make some decisions.

Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC rough-in started this week, so we needed to finalize decisions about plumbing fixtures, appliances, and other minor mechanical stuff.  Not really a big deal.  Unfortunately, even small decisions are not my thing.  When my husband wants to do something really nice for me, he chooses what we're going to have for dinner so I don't have to.  If I could be a character in a Wes Anderson movie and wear one outfit for the rest of my life, I would jump at the chance.  Additionally, I wasn't really informed enough to make some of the choices we needed to make, so I spent a lot of time googling LED can lights, water filtration systems, bathroom exhaust fans, and refrigerators.  Not that that did anything but give me too much information to ever possibly process.

I think refrigerators might show up in my nightmares for a while; there are just too many choices.  Go ahead, look at refrigerators at Best Buy, just to get started.  Let's say you think, "I'll only look at the ones on sale, so I get a good deal."  That narrows it down, right, to only FIVE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN.  I even went so far as to take my two young children to a plumbing and appliance showroom, thinking maybe seeing them in person and the help of a knowledgeable saleslady could help; it's not really a good plan to take two small children to the grocery store, and produce doesn't cost several thousand dollars.  Yes, of course, my children are perfectly adorable and well-behaved and angelic, but they did tip over a grocery cart in the check-out line last summer, and I think I aged myself several years beaming the DON'T TOUCH THAT look over the saleslady's shoulder while she was showing me six more brands of fridge to consider.  I essentially picked one that was pretty and had a beverage dispenser, y'all.  Even the online reviews didn't help--for every positive "I love this fridge!" there was another, "This piece of junk has never worked right" for every model.  I'm going to need to invest in a dartboard to pick a washer and dryer.

They'll go here.

But because we had planned to do this project for pretty much most of my adult life, I did have almost all the plumbing fixtures already picked.  Except for drains; I didn't know that drains were a thing where there were choices.  A few good reviews online and a nice lady at the lights store helped me out picking basic light fixtures (though I still have to pick out the nice-looking ones--I CANT HEAR YOU LALALA!), and my nice spouse figured out bathroom exhaust fans, which, also, I would have thought didn't really come with options.  Some things should really only come as one kind; you should be able to go to the Home Depot, ask for a bathroom exhaust fan, and they bring you the one fan that's made because that's all anyone ever needs.  Let's not overthink it, you guys.

Thankfully, I did not have to make choices about pipe.

I'm looking forward to showing you all of our choices as they come in, and I think you'll be as excited to see the more fleshed out porch as I have been.  I'm not expecting a lot to happen this weekend; El Tri plays tomorrow and all of Houston will either completely shut down or totally explode.  The kids and I are going to watch at home and eat spicy popcorn.