Home Improvement

Speaking from recent experience, the smaller thing can, and often does, turn into a larger thing all on its own and always at the worst time.

For the last 3 years, I knew my water heater was on its last legs. I kept putting it off until two Saturdays ago I had a wet basement and no hot water. The kick in the ass was that it wasn't that hard to replace the unit: 2 hours of labor to install and 2 hours to drain, remove, and clean around the old one. Cost me just under $650 including same day delivery which was awesome because I would have had to rent a truck and drafted someone to help me load/unload it otherwise.

So my advice is when you allocate time to address the small problem, give yourself double that in case it turns into a bigger project. It's always easier to deal with big stuff when it's not a surprise.