The Renovating Reverend

I’m sure you’ve heard the very old saying, “A thing worth doing is worth doing well.” I often think of this saying as I’m stripping woodwork in preparation for refinishing it. A person can strip just enough to make the wood smooth and ready for sanding, primer, and paint (as we will do in our bathrooms and kitchen), or go further and remove every last bit for staining and sealing (which is what we’ll do everywhere else). Some folks go so far as using dental tools to pick wood completely clean. You will find one dental pick in my tool bucket, but most of our wood trim has gotten rather dinged up over the past 112 years, and maybe even had a bit of water damage here and there, so it will never look anything like it did the day it was installed, no matter what amount of effort I put into the job of refinishing it. This could make the job seem futile, as in, “Why bother. Just paint it all.” That’s certainly a valid option. However, if you like stained woodwork, because of the warmth or the look of the wood grain, a different mindset is needed.

The English writer G.K. Chesterton once said, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.” This twist on the older saying is one that I have lived by since the day I read it. Chesterton made an important point, in his trademark paradoxical fashion: If something is worth doing, then it’s worth doing, no matter the quality of the end product. If we allow ourselves to freeze up because we’re worried the end result will not be perfect, the thing worth doing will never get started. If we endlessly toil at a project because it just isn’t good enough yet, the thing worth doing might not happen.

Are there times when precision is called for? I know there are. Do we sometimes look at things we’ve accomplished and see how we might have done better or differently? Surely. Are there times when we need to let someone else do a thing? Absolutely. Am I going to let perfectionism prevent me from digging into the things-worth-doing that I can tackle, or keep me from appreciating the things-worth-doing that I’ve done? I certainly hope not!

Extending Chesterton’s philosophy, I can try to appreciate the efforts of others with a less perfectionistic eye.

Today, I’ve got the day off so that I can spend a good chunk of time stripping paint and varnish from the parlor wood work. I’d better get back to it, with an updated version of Chesterton’s saying in mind: “Do your best, and git ‘er done.”