There's a lot to be said about home maintenance - not much of it constructive.
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But the home being the castle and all, there comes a time for everything, and water dripping through the ceiling is usually a good indicator.
Other hints include, but are not limited to, vermin, bugs, mould, chips, dings, holes, noises, spurts, corrosion, decay and a general sense that the world is falling apart.
Not all these elements can be blamed on Covid, of course, but a lot of home maintenance aspirations can.
That's because coronavirus has had the effect of confining people together and forcing them to interact. Psychologists will tell you this can open Pandora's Box.
There's only so many minutes before conversation necessarily turns away from hard topics, like you're annoying habits, and onto more repairable things, like say the house.
Some see it as a fantastic leadership opportunity, should you feel impelled to take up the baton.
Others sense an undertone the baton might well be used for darker purposes if not grasped with intent.
With the price of property the way it is, most people sense instinctively that moving out is not an option. And in this way house maintenance schedules evolve.
Resistance to change is natural but typically when the snowball leaves the mountain it's a top-down process involving a cascade of wish lists.
Picture a waterfall, creating a rainbow, greening a valley, carving out a grand canyon vista.
Then translate that to a dripping down pipe, corroding the gutter, rotting the slab, clashing with interior colour schemes and triggering a sink hole.
That sink hole is your wallet, undergoing a thaw not unlike the Siberian permafrost.
There are many jobs you can bugger up yourself but prudence suggests some repairs demand a warranty, so time to dial a tradie.
Nearly every one I've spoken to over the last three months reports that business has been booming.
That's another way of saying people across the Hunter are confronting inconvenient truths about where they live, and possibly who they live with.
It's about living up to expectations, managing expectations, and in some cases, exceeding expectations - usually with regards to quotes, which can be hard to gauge.
One sage tradie offered the following advice: It's easy, get three.
One will be too high, meaning that tradie has too much work on.
One will be too low meaning that tradie is possibly just out of jail.
The third will be in between suggesting that tradie wants the work and may possibly turn up, but probably not when you want.
Better yet if you know that tradie's brother's uncle's cousin's girlfriend's mate who used to work with your partner.
In that way, repairs to the house reinforce the major asset we all have in life - relationships. And in uncertain times like these, they're a very constructive thing to maintain.
