Standards

As I'm working my way through the new house, replacing things that need replacing and fixing things that need repair, I'm coming to the awful realization that the previous owner did a lot of things completely half-ass.  I'm also realizing that for some reason, if there's a standard way to do something, the prior owner didn't do it that way. I had a list of projects this weekend I only got halfway through.  I didn't finish partly because the last time these things were done, the prior owner didn't do them the standard way.  Case in point, the kitchen sink appeared outwardly to be a standard 25X22" kitchen sink fitting into a standard hole on a standard countertop.  It needed replacing.  Badly.

When I did get the original sink out, it turns out the hole was anything but standard.  It was quite a bit smaller, and from the looks of things, carved out half-ass with a saws-all.  Getting a new sink in required widening and lengthening the hole with a jigsaw.  Of course, the hole had to go all the way back to the backsplash, and when I got that far I figured out the guard on the bottom of the jigsaw wouldn't let me cut that closely to an edge.  So I improvised, cutting out sections with a Dremel (setting off the smoke alarm in the process) and knocking pieces out with some precision percussive maintenance (whacking the hell out of them with my channel locks).  In the end, it got done, albeit with a few chips in the formica I'll need to figure out how to cover next weekend.

There's a metaphor for the media business here, believe it or not.  I'm not one for blindly following standards, but standards exist not only to streamline things and make them easier for us, but also to let everyone know what to expect when you get down to the nuts and bolts of things.  With standards, there are fewer surprises, delays and improvisation.