Net Profit

Costs (tangible, intangible) of the outdoor project:

• One tetanus shot, for her
• One hammer, shattered
• One silver SUV, interioraly trashed
• About $1500 in lumber and rentals, invested
• About $1100 in patio-building supplies, invested
• About $600 in landscaping costs, invested
• Two months of weekends, gone
• Three pairs of men's shorts, ripped
• Three pairs of work gloves, ruined
• One riding mower tractor, bent under the weight of patio remnants
• About $450 in extras, table, grill, hot dogs, beer
• Two months worth of full trash cans, full of old deck bits
• One heirloom 1970s circular saw, dead
• One rose bush, mercilessly slaughtered
• One college t-shirt, stained
• One false alarm that we were done, emotional toll
• Remove obvious death threat and add power source for bumpin' tunes, $225 (electical)
• Permit, $71

Revenue (tangible, intangible) from the project:

• About 350 square feet of outdoor living space that we are not ashamed of
• New view, lovely
• Marital bonding, jump ahead to year three-levels of marital wisdom
• $18.52 in Google Adsense revenue
• Added property value, doesn't matter - we will never move
• Deck-building, patio-building knowledge
• Local economic growth, all major purchases made at locally-owned stores
• Ten more years of being tetanus free, for her
• Two egos, inflated
• Years of grilled pizza, in our future
• Light, won't kill us
• Tunage, wattage

Net results: Positive, totally worth it.

You might notice the electrician's fees in there. Electric Dan is coming by Friday to hook us up with a new light that won't be such a buzzkill (get it?). Ever forward, people, we move ever forward.

We also got word from the inspector that there is a slight dip in one set of stairs, but Hubs remains confident that this will be an easy job. I bit my tongue and did not remind him that we said each little process in this big project would be easy. It's never easy.