{"id":126,"date":"2006-09-19T13:49:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-19T13:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/?p=126"},"modified":"2015-03-14T06:34:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-14T06:34:11","slug":"the-mushroom-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/the-mushroom-factor\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mushroom Factor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
It doesn’t take long into most projects to become acquainted with what DIY ers call the mushroom factor. A term originating in 1986 from Clem Labine, an author in The Old-House Journal, describing the unpredictabilty of renovation work, or as Anita of Anita’s ‘Book of Days’<\/a> says “Because of the mushroom factor(“Since we are doing this, we might as well do that at the same time.”)” <\/p>\n

Yes, my husband and I know this all too well. It comes from the logic of doing what needs to be done since you are there doing whatever it is anyway….only it gets away from you. It mushrooms, in time, money, and effort. And that, friends, is why we have movies such as ‘The Money Pit’- classic example of the mushroom factor gone amuck.\"The<\/a> <\/p>\n

I think this post is in danger of mushrooming, as I have the very bad habit of either digressing or going on and on…. I now have this as a definition to refer back to when I will inevitably be referring to …da tadata….~The Mushromm F-a-c–t-o-r<\/span>…fadeout<\/small><\/p>\n

I think our most representative situation of it was the kitchen renovation. It was renovation in name only, what actually happened was that all was torn out to the open air, and my husband started from scratch. I will be devoting at least an entire post to that project… it has many funny moments, well, maybe not all funny, telling<\/span> is a better word.
Squidoo: Mushroom Factor<\/a>, Technorati: DIY<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It doesn’t take long into most projects to become acquainted with what DIY ers call the mushroom factor. A term originating in 1986 from Clem Labine, an author in The Old-House Journal, describing the unpredictabilty of renovation work, or as Anita of Anita’s ‘Book of Days’ says “Because of the mushroom factor(“Since we are doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/09\/B00009QNY5.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg?fit=113%2C160&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":375,"url":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/d-i-y-mushroom-factor-f-y-i\/","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":0},"title":"D-I-Y Mushroom Factor, F-Y-I","author":"Ilona","date":"May 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Every home remodeler and renovator runs into it at some time, the dreaded mushrooming of a simple project into the monster money pit.","rel":"","context":"In "fixing-it"","block_context":{"text":"fixing-it","link":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/category\/fixing-it\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/9759052_f260.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11,"url":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/what-is-the-mushroom-factor\/","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":1},"title":"What Is the Mushroom Factor?","author":"Ilona","date":"January 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"fixing up old houses That is the question of the day, isn't it? Well, though I wrote a small blurb about it early in the days of this blog, I found that Squidoo had no search results for it. That is right: a whole huge online community had no resource\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "fixing-it"","block_context":{"text":"fixing-it","link":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/category\/fixing-it\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/oldhouse.jpg?fit=541%2C389&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/oldhouse.jpg?fit=541%2C389&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/oldhouse.jpg?fit=541%2C389&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":103,"url":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/handyman-gets-busy\/","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":2},"title":"Handyman Gets Busy","author":"Ilona","date":"January 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's hardly ever what you plan, though. I let the Handyman know I was talking about the Kitchen remodel, but in the meantime he has found his hands full with the breaker to his office switching off every few minutes. He has been troubleshooting and conferencing with a buddy who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "hindrances"","block_context":{"text":"hindrances","link":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/category\/hindrances\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":40,"url":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/get-joe-writing-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":3},"title":"Get Joe Writing Again","author":"Ilona","date":"December 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Actually we are talking about Handyman, here, but he referred to himself as Joe, and so Joe it is. Joe Everyman.We need to encourage him to write again. We got all caught up with the fall round up of general chores and a few remodeling jobs that were a little\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Handyman"","block_context":{"text":"Handyman","link":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/category\/handyman\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":110,"url":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/maintenance\/","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":4},"title":"Maintenance","author":"Ilona","date":"December 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cureThat bathroom drywall rot I mentioned? I spoke to my husband about it right after writing that post, and it is on the list for this weekend. yay. It is always true that it is easier to keep something maintenanced than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "home"","block_context":{"text":"home","link":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/category\/home\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":71,"url":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/new-kitchen-continued\/","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":5},"title":"New Kitchen – continued","author":"Ilona","date":"September 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Before I continue I would like to say that if I had realized all the work that I was going to be getting myself into, I would have somehow talked myself out of this project using whatever excuses I could think up: \"it is way beyond my capability & ability\",\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Handyman"","block_context":{"text":"Handyman","link":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/category\/handyman\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegardencompanion.com\/house\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}