Demolition and the Nesting Instinct

Confession time: our project house is a mess. If you've ever gone through the demolition phase of a project, I don't have to tell you this. You know it. You've been through it. There's nothing you can do about it. Friends and family want to come visit and see what you're up to in your spare time and the first thing you think is, "do I need to clean up?" Or, more appropriately, "what do I need to do so no one gets hurt?" So you walk through the place and move the extension cords, make sure there aren't rusty nails laying around, put something over the hole in the floor and hope for the best.

I think it's just a general nesting instinct we have. The house may be bare to the studs, but it's still a house. We want to make it look as good as we can. It helps brighten the rose-colored glasses that all of our visitors must wear to enter our project. Of course, by straightening up the demolition mess and vacuuming the nasty black dust periodically, it improves our morale as well as making it a safer work environment and easier to move to the next step of putting things back together. And believe me, any morale boost you can find during a never-ending demolition phase is important even if it means hours of wielding a ShopVac!

Are we the only ones who try to "clean up" our project house for visitors? Or do you do it to?