Last Saturday evening, a huge rainstorm swept through Atlanta. I tell you this because Sunday morning, there was a very large POP sound (like a shotgun, so I assume it was a transformer) and the power had gone out. Considering that I had been planning on spending my morning using a shop vac in the dining room, I was a little bummed at the unexpected setback. But, since I also have about 200 unfinished projects around the house on any given day, I wasn’t deterred for long.
I swept out all of the junk in the upstairs hallway, cleaned off the baseboards, and whipped out the paint.
Sure, I could have used more light, and still wished the power was on (those smoke detectors run on both power and a backup battery, so that’s why you still see the light on there).
But before long, I was making progress on the first coat and the hallway was looking much brighter, with power or without. Exactly the way I intended when I first picked the new paint color.
I’m sure that the coat isn’t quite up to the usual standards thanks to a lack of appropriate light to see mistakes, but I’ve often learned with this house that done is often better than perfect. Because there are still 199 more unfinished projects to go. And this little unexpected snafu in my morning plans didn’t mean that I had to stop making progress in the house altogether.
Have you ever worked on a project with no power? What was it? Maybe I should make a list of things that can be done for the next time this happens!















