Fifty Year Plan

When we bought the house we currently live in, there were several things that were very attractive about it:  It's in the neighborhood we love.  The patio is amazing.  And prior owners had not screwed it up.  What I mean by this is that in this neighborhood of sixty year old houses, most have been "updated".  And if you're as picky as I am, they haven't been updated correctly.  This means the quality of the work, and the style of the update doesn't fit the original design of the home.  I know, picky.

So here we had a home that hadn't been screwed up, but needed A LOT of work.  So we got to work.  One of the early repairs was a toilet flange.  That's the part where the three or four inch pipe comes up through the floor and has a flange with holes to secure the toilet to the pipe; you really want a good connection here.

It had broken into a couple of pieces; sixty year old cast iron will do that.  Conventional wisdom says you go down to the local Home Despot and buy the $3.95 repair flange/ring, put the toilet back down with two wax rings, and you're done... for five to ten years.

I'm pretty sure I'll still be working on this house in five years, so I didn't want to go that route.  The standard I set for myself was that any repair or improvement should  last at least fifty years.  So I bought a cast iron compression flange for $20, hammered out the concrete all around the pipe, attached the flange, poured concrete in around it, and presto!  For about five times the effort, I got ten times the longevity.

I know what some are thinking, "Yeah, but you probably won't even be in the house that long."  Perhaps, yet we don't yet plan to be elsewhere.   And that's actually not really the point.  The point is that with a long view, we all do things differently.

Today we were on the lake (big surprise, I know).  Elisabeth and Ava skied, cousins and friends wakeboarded and kneeboarded.  Then the weather changed and it was time to get off the lake; when the weather on Utah Lake turns, you don't press your luck, you get off the lake.  Kat and I hadn't had a turn, and we LOVE to wakeboard and surf behind the boat.  This isn't that uncommon for parents; you facilitate your kids' activities without getting around to your own.  This can be frustrating if your calculus is short term.  But if you're looking at things with a fifty year fix mindset, it's a perfect day.

Kat and I have worked hard at this.  It includes taking our kids skiing to Powder Mountain where the days consists of two ski runs and four hours of snow play, snacks, and hot chocolate.  The long term goal is a family that skis and snowboards together, so a day spent up at the mountain having a good time together with ski equipment in the general vicinity counts!

We're on the fifty year plan.  Of course we make mistakes and get selfish when we think short-term.  But we don't crater on our failures, rather we repent.  Because even with our own progress, the long view is what carries us.