take (great) pains (to do something)
Fig. to make a great effort to do something. Tom took pains to decorate the room exactly right. We took great pains to get there on time.
take pains, to
To make a laborious effort; to take assiduous care. The use of pains for “troubles” dates from Shakespeare’s time and survives mainly in this cliché (and in the adjective painstaking). “Yet much he praised the pains he took, And well those pains did pay,” wrote Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808).