I recently finished a project and, as usual, stood back to give it a final once over. I noticed something that could stand a bit of tweaking.

One of the voices in my head was screaming at me, ‘No! No! It's done. Move on.’ But the other voice – the small, quiet one that cannot be silenced, kept at me. I caved to that voice because I knew it was right. That small adjustment would vastly improve the end result.

The required several hours of extra work as one thing led to another. The extra labor wasn’t in the budget. There was no way to pass it on to the customer. It had to come out my pocket.

I always try to allow for some contingency factor when I price jobs and, sometimes, this works out. But when you are trying to cut the cost down to where it is affordable for the customer and still make a decent profit, the contingency may not be sufficient to cover even the most common issues much less last minute reworking.

Sometimes I wish I could silence that little voice but, in my heart, I know it is almost always right.

D.D.