Outside help or onsite staff?

Well I'm proud to announce that after weeks of work our on site laundry room has reached another milestone in its refit. We've finally finished the ceiling and walls, and all that remains is linoing the floor and putting shelving in.

This room was originally a large point of discussion in the company - do we slowly refit it as staff hours are available, or do we quickly pay an outside contractor to do it?

The aregument for outside contractor ran that it would be quicker, there would probably be a better job overall and that it wouldn't distract staff from their normal responsibilities. The counter argument ran that it wasn't a customer facing area so the work didn't have to be perfect, that the time factor wasn't an issue (we've run the old way for a year and another week or two wasn't a problem) and that if we were paying the staff anyway, why not use up the slack periods?

To cut a long story short after much debate it was decided to have the staff do the work, and what a marathon it's turned out to be. To start with we've had damp problems and so many other demands on our time that its proceeded very slowly. But after putting a few minutes here and there into it, its sort of become ours. Its a very odd feeling to walk into a room and remember the damp, smelly and peeling place it used to be a see straight, dry white walls and say - "We did that!".

A contractor would have been quicker, it would have been easier, but doing it ourselves let us change the place ourselves, not a lot but it makes us more of a team. Defiantly something to do again in the same situation.