Preface: My big, old house was built in 1907. There is no end to projects with a house that old.
The weirdest years started in 2021 at the (almost) end of Covid. We went to Washington state to visit our son in July. We returned on the 4th to find that while we were gone, a pipe started spraying water in the kitchen ceiling. There was about 1 inch of water on the floor. I scrambled to cap the leaking pipe and restore water to the rest of the house.
Next was insurance, a company to dry everything out and remove all the drywall and insulation that was saturated, and so forth. We contacted a contractor to rebuild our (1940s?) kitchen, which was badly in need of a remodel. The wait to get on his schedule was about a year.
The remodel started in 2022, and took most of that year and some of the next, as work started and stopped depending on sub-contractors. The remodel took everything down to the studs. During this time we moved everything out of the kitchen, set up a temporary kitchen, etc.
About a year later, in 2023, the kitchen was done. During that year most of my free time was spent cutting costs by contributing my own labor (sweat equity). Much of that was removing the multiple layers of old flooring and taking it down to the floor boards.
Shortly after we had moved in to the kitchen, and were feeling good about everything, my company was informed that our main customer had given notice to term our contract. (My part of the biz processes medical claims. I’m the DBA and main developer.) This process led to a year-long process of slowly down-sizing. We started letting staff go as their jobs went away. Except my department was busier than ever, with demands for wind-down work of all sorts.
About mid 2024, we were down to a skeleton crew. My hours were cut to save the company money. (This would be bad, but working 3/4 as many hours is rather nice. At 67 years old, being semi-retired feels great.) We had a new line of business that was being explored. Late last year that business stared taking off, and we were adding new, smaller customers at a rather rapid pace. We are adding staff and expanding again.
These were the weirdest years of my life, so far.
