Some call it mission creep, others call it the might as wells. Whatever people call it, While We’re At It Syndrome (WWAIS) is a tragic and devastating malady afflicting many DIYers and those who love(d) them.

At the heart of WWAIS is the belief that if you’re going to do something, it’s worth doing it once and doing it right. That’s certainly at the core of my motivation for most of my projects—if I don’t think I can do a great job, I’ll make way for someone who can, or skip it altogether. This part is usually straightforward: I look at my goal, then assess my skills, my tools, my available time, and my budget. If all lines up, I pull the trigger and head to the hardware store, shopping list and debit card in hand.

Where WWAIS creeps in is usually a day or two later, once the initial shock of the hit to your bank account has passed and you’ve started to tear out the floor/wall/sod around whatever your latest project is and you suddenly start valuing your own (underestimated) time and the renovation itself more than the initial budget (I mean, hey, it’s already spent, right?). At this point it seems to make sense that, once you’ve got the patient opened up, might as well do major surgery as minor, right? I mean, you’re not going to re-do this entire portion of your kitchen/hallway/front yard any time soon, right? Makes sense to upgrade that laminate cork floor/brushed nickel sconce/coated wire fencing to a much nicer (and more durable! your brain tries to justify) hand-burnished bamboo plank/hand-hammered bronze sconce/hand-hewn cedar rail fence (with pergola. Pergolas.). The debit card stays home and the credit card goes shopping.

It really does make sense to just do the job once. It also often makes sense to add the greatest value to your home, as well, and it makes sense to create something at which you can look with pride for decades. It just doesn’t make sense to my wallet. It’s amazing how much my devious brain will try to convince me that I only want to do a project once, but will simultaneously try to convince me that setting the budget can be done many times in many increments.

I’ve recently run into this on a smaller project, building an acoustic guitar (because there’s a shortage of beautiful, sweet-sounding, inexpensive guitars on the market? you ask. No, because I’m that dumb, I answer). I planned out the materials, spending a little where I thought it’d matter (or show), saving where I could make do with stuff I already had. Came up with a tight budget that got me close to what a store-bought guitar would cost. Now that I’m a month deep into this thing’s guts, I’m seeing opportunities to add a little more pizazz, a little more bling (a classic WWAIS symptom). I’m probably not going to do this again, so why not? Why not spend my limited time wisely by making a statement out of my projects?

I think I need to scrap my “Do the job once” rule—or, more accurately, scrap it for all but one project.

The one job to do once: Set a budget.