The real cost is never what it seems. For anything. Sure, a big part is financial, but the full cost is always measured in so many other ways, too. A new car not only means the price, but also the time to shop for it, the paperwork, the insurance, and the potential hassle of trading in or selling your previous vehicle. A new job might bring a pay increase, but it also brings new plans, a new commute and expenses, and the time it takes to search for the job and get up to speed with it. Every choice has costs and consequences and it’s rare that they’re all obvious.
We’ve been thinking about a basement remodel for a while. Some things don’t make sense and need to be changed. Others are a matter of preference rather than necessity. We were planning on summer of 2022 until the “catastrophic failure” of the water heater tank changed those plans. In some ways, it’s been a hidden blessing because it moved parts of the process along much faster than we were thinking. We’re closer to those hopes now than we were on February 1. In other ways, it’s been a different kind of challenge. Rooms are obviously connected to each other and walls have two sides. We couldn’t make decisions about repairing the damage WITHOUT also considering the other spaces and the changes we want to make.
The process comes with a cost that never makes it to paper or the checking account. Weighing options, considering priorities, walk-throughs and reading the resulting estimates. Our furniture down there has been stacked in three different ways since the whole ordeal started and everything is coated with three layers of drywall dust, despite our best efforts to clean things up every week or two.
There’s a cost with time and space. How long will it be until we have the space back? We went over a week without our laundry hooked up and that brings its own stress. We passed the three-month mark this past weekend since the basement has been functional and we’ve still got a long way to go. Our rhythms are disrupted. Our space is disrupted. We’re sharing our house with two total strangers and two total strangers are sharing their workspace with a family of four.
Commitment has a cost. Once we tell the contractor to go ahead, he starts making plans and once those plans start moving, we’re in it. We’re in it regardless of what is in the ceiling, we’re in it no matter what we find in the walls. We’re in it now that we need a plumber to fix a few more things that were uncovered. We’re committed to the final outcome, which means we’re committed to whatever bumps come along the way. That commitment can be costly. That’s not at all to say the resources are unlimited or that we have infinite patience… there are certainly things that could come up that could derail the whole thing for us. And we’d be left neck deep in an unfinished mess. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Financially, it’s a big investment and I can now speak from personal experience that those home improvement shows that always find something, or two somethings, aren’t nearly as cliché as I thought. It’s the reality. We’ve made discoveries that shut the whole thing down while we figure it out with Henry. We’ve been on hold for a week waiting for the plumber I mentioned above to do some things we weren’t planning on. These things happen. We’ve saved up. We’ve been fortunate. We’ve tried to be faithful with what we’ve been given. Still, the number on the bottom of the piece of paper is a big one and it wasn’t an easy decision to make, or an easy series of decisions to make.
While all this figures into the total cost in some way, there’s one more aspect that is even more important. For us, it was the night we were down with the bad electric and the eroded footers and the ripped-out drywall and we looked at each other and said, “But what if we DON’T?” The cost of not doing what gets us closer to the final outcome will always be far higher than the cost of doing it.
At the end of the day, we’re just remodeling a basement and trying to figure out how to do laundry without drywall dust getting in the machines. Whatever changes you’re thinking about, whatever crisis you’re navigating, whatever major shift is unfolding for you, as you consider the cost, I urge you to also consider the cost of not embracing it. The cost of regret, the cost of holding back, the cost of turning around or turning away.
I urge you to hold that final outcome in your heart and mind and trust the vision. I hope you’ll stand tall and take the courageous step toward it.