Delays Associated with Decision Creep

I’ve talked about project creep before, which is when a project you do leads to other projects that you need to do to complete the one you’re working on. Or, even more often, projects you do that lead to to uncover OTHER projects that MUST be done. Like when you redo the floors in your house and realize other stuff looks crappy. You know.

There’s also decision creep, an insidious angle to project creep that doesn’t seem like it would be that hard. Hah.

On the surface, it looked relatively simple. Shape the bulkhead and prep for installation.

Granted, that simple sentence is a couple of days of work by the time all is said and done, between cleaning the hull, cutting the foam, final trimming of the bulkhead, cutting the fiberglass sheets and mixing the epoxy AND wetting out the fiberglass and installing it. But let’s stick with simple.

But the bulkhead isn’t just the bulkhead. It’s also where it intersects with the floor, and the fore-aft pieces of wood that form the inboard side of the quarterberth and under the fridge. What do we do with the finished edge? Is it mahogany round? Does it look weird if there’s a vertical piece that has mahogany appearing halfway up? How do we want that inboard face to be - intersected by the bulkhead (meaning end grain wood visible) or not? Does it need to be stronger, meaning does it need to be ONE piece and not two?

After a lot of back and forth and drawings of what it might look like, the decision was made. One piece of plywood across the inboard side it is.

Oh. Now we need to decide where to cut back the existing piece of wood.

See the bare piece of plywood on the right? This needs to go away. But how far back do we cut it?

Simple decision right? Just cut it along the 2x4 that’s there. Not so fast. That 2x4? It supported the OLD engine front cover. The engine front cover that went in the dumpster on Saturday (on purpose). The new engine is much smaller physically than the old one. We want a little more foot space in the galley, so the new engine cover will be further back.

Oh. And instead of having the engine cover (which is also part of the counter for the galley) also be a step down from the companionway, we’re going back to a full length ladder. So where does THAT need to be? That might be the line we’re using to decide on all of it - the line of the ladder from the floor to the companionway.

Off to storage we go to get the ladder. To clamp it to a piece of wood to simulate the line. To draw a line along the 2x4 to see just how far we can cut that wood back.

To finally start cutting the piece of wood out.

Ahh decision creep. It’s as responsible for project creep in terms of time as anything else, even if you don’t actually have to do anything but decide.