View from the North 40: It's everything but the kitchen sink

Research says one of the most common lies we humans tell ourselves is the one about how long a project will take to complete, which isn’t an explanation so much about why I don’t have a kitchen sink, but rather an explanation about why I’m surprised that I don’t have it up and running by now.

This lapse between intended completion date and actual completion date is so common among humans that it has been studied and given a name: planning fallacy — a bias in our thought processes, first identified by researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1977. It explains why humans tend to underestimate how much time a task or action will take to complete, saying that this is “due in part to the reliance on overly optimistic performance scenarios.”

I didn’t realize I was being optimistic.

It’s not like I just jumped straight into this sink project. I had to ponder how I was going to do this. We aren’t ready to build the kitchen cabinets, but the back and forth into the shop to use the sink there started wearing out our door, and our patience, pretty quickly. My idea for a compromise, though, was to build a workbench style counter that I can plumb a sink into, and when we get real cabinets I’ll take the workbench to the shop, put a full top on it and have me a perfect work space.

As a bonus, I can build it for next to nothing, with some former floor joists stacked by the barn, some plywood stored in the shop, and the, screws, tools and wood finishes I have on hand. I came up with a simple and sturdy design.

I had the process all pictured in my head, the measuring, plans drawing, gathering materials, cutting, assembling, installing and watching someone else do the plumbing, then, voila, a usable sink in the kitchen — just like a real adult — in a week. Ten days, tops.

In my defense of not having a sink-workbench combo 10 days after I started the project, I didn’t know about a little obstacle called optimism bias. Because I was basking in the rosy glow of the very real prospect of having a kitchen sink, I failed to imagine things that could go wrong or at least take longer than desired. Therefore, I did not factor unplanned difficulties into my construction schedule.

Don’t judge. Research says to misjudge these obstacles is human.

Like the 3-foot snow drift covering my wood pile and the subzero temps which, combined, meant that I had to dig down to the lumber, then let a couple days of sunshine work enough ice-melting magic I could separate the boards, take them to the shop and lay them out on the floor to thaw. A few days later there was a couple hours spent pulling nails from the lumber then another day of drying out.

This was followed by a couple days’ wait for the temperature to get into the double digits above zero so I could use a power sander outside to smooth the boards a bit, plus sweep and shovel the sawdust mess because I set the sawdust production right on the walking path from vehicles to shop. The next day I cut all the lumber, including the plywood I’m repurposing for the top.

But the plywood had to be strong-armed out from where I conveniently placed it at the back of a tidy stack of new lumber, and once I got a good look at the plywood I realized it would have to be washed and sanded then primed and painted.

That’s where I am now — slogging through the middle of that delay — post-washing, pre-sanding-priming-painting-sealing of the plywood top, but also pre-assembly and finishing of the bench as a whole. Sadly, that means that the closest the sink has come to being set in place for the plumbing to get hooked up is the sink cut-out template I made and sat on the plywood.

I know the research says that I’m supposed to be looking at realistic times for each remaining step and factoring in some kind of Kentucky windage for the myriad of things that could go wrong, but all I can think is that, hey, this project will be done in two days, three tops.

It’s like I’m possessed by Scarlett O’Hara and my brain can only say, “Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, I’ll think about problems and delays tomorrow.”

I’ve never thought of myself as a hysterical optimist before, but clearly I have a natural-born talent for it. Logic says I might not have a kitchen sink for a couple weeks — maybe three — but at least thinking of myself as an optimist has bolstered my mood. I’ll happily reassess my timeline in a couple days. Three at most.

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Construction professionals say you can have any job done good, fast or cheap, pick any two. Right now, I have cheap nailed down, but time will tell how things will play out with the other two options at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .