{"id":55347,"date":"2023-03-24T13:24:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T17:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=55347"},"modified":"2023-10-05T12:32:49","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T16:32:49","slug":"sims-4-overthinking-the-sunk-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=55347","title":{"rendered":"Sims 4 Overthinking: The Sunk Cost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alright, finally. The year is still 2001, where we’ve been stuck for the past three episodes. Why have we been sticking around a single year, you may ask? Well, mostly because of Kelly’s pregnancy. Not much really happens, in most cases, over a course of five years to a person. They might move, start a new job, get a dog, experience a breakup, but all of that can be explained and told very quickly. In our case, telling this particular story, the most important details are the things that happen to the house. If Kelly lived in the house, and had a plan for what to do when the baby was born, this would all fly by very quickly. Interpersonal drama is fun, but not the point of the series. The problem is, she and Michael don’t<\/em> have a plan, not yet, anyway.<\/p>\n

Their indecision has created a bottleneck of sorts. In a way, we have to zoom in. We need to see every little factor and decision along the way, because right now, the unknown is slowing us down. Babies change everything,\u00a0<\/em>and if Lorretta is honest with herself, that is exactly why she’s suddenly been working overtime on the house.<\/p>\n

She would have been doing projects, sure, it’s her house and she needs to make it livable. We would have been looking at the alterations she’s making over the next three years while she slowly fixes it up. But, the looming possibility of a baby on the way has given her a time constraint. Kelly doesn’t want to stay with her because of the fumes, so Lorretta is doing everything in her power to get rid of them as quickly as possible, just in case. Kelly and her mom don’t have a good relationship, and Lorretta is trying not to kid herself about that, but, if they need somewhere…
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Michael and her are working overtime to tackle the house, and Lorretta has hired a contractor to give her an estimate on the water damage upstairs. She had previously been procrastinating on that, since it will cost a lot of money, but she has motivation now.<\/p>\n

As for cosmetic fixes, she and Michael are working on it anytime Lorretta isn’t at work or asleep. She realizes that the stairs have been painted, and underneath is the same hardwood as covers the rest of the downstairs. They try paint stripper in a corner to see if it works to take up the horrible ivory paint, and find it’s ruining the hardwood. Damn. Instead, they cut their losses and agree to just paint over it, it’s a shame, but it’s better than the color that’s currently there.<\/p>\n

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They choose black to match the trim in the rest of the house, since any attempt for brown would just look like it was pretending to be wood. Upstairs, they take the carpet out of the hallway, and paint the stairwell and hall to match the dining room. They do all this over the course of only two weeks. She asks him repeatedly if he needs a break, but Michael is enjoying the problem solving and doesn’t mind the nitty gritty of the work, so he assures her he doesn’t. Besides that, he really wants to impress the woman he’s hoping will be his mother-in-law one day.<\/p>\n

Finally, it’s time to tackle the bedrooms. They take out all the carpets, and find more hardwood floors, however, many of them are badly water damaged. They take a few days to focus on removing the horrendous wood paneling, while they figure out what to do.<\/p>\n

The contractor comes in and assesses the damage, and it’s not good news. It’s been forty years, at least, of letting the rot form, and the wood paneling over it created a sort of closed system. The water couldn’t escape, so every time it warmed up, it evaporated into vapor trapped in the wall, only to collect on a new surface when it cooled. Plus, it’s an exterior wall, meaning insulation needs replaced as well. Six feet of damage, at least, with needing a total replacement of drywall, insulation, and flooring.<\/p>\n

Lorretta was prepared, but a little nauseous, looking at the estimate. She regrets not just selling the place when she had the chance, and briefly considers putting it on the market now…but no, she’d put work into it at this point. She is experiencing the sunk cost fallacy, and is self aware enough to know it, but not enough to let it go.<\/p>\n

She has a few more contractors come in to shop prices, but they all say the same thing. Nearly an entire wall is toast, and so is her bank account.<\/p>\n

Finally, she opts to a sort of compromise she feels will remove the sting a bit. She’d wanted to put carpets in the bedrooms, and by replacing the damaged floor in that room with a cheaper alternative to the hardwood, she can do that. It’s not long-run cheaper by any means, she still has to buy and install the carpets for the whole upstairs rather than just one area of hardwood, but it gives the illusion that she’s getting something out of it, rather than just cutting her losses. She hires the contractor she had the best feeling about, cheaper but not cheapest, and starts shopping for carpets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alright, finally. The year is still 2001, where we’ve been stuck for the past three episodes. Why have we been sticking around a single year, you may ask? Well, mostly because of Kelly’s pregnancy. Not much really happens, in most cases, over a course of five years to a person. They might move, start a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[639],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thesimsoverthinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55347"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55355,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55347\/revisions\/55355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}