I'm beginning to suspect that I've dug myself into a pit of insanity.
It started so innocently. A fresh-faced young couple looking for a place to call their own braved the real-estate market of Fall 1998. They'd expended enough energy on their mobile home to make it feel homey, but there were some real drawbacks to trailer-park life: no TV antennas, no drying anything on a clothesline, no car work in your carport, no garage, one communal area in which to wash your car, and the knowledge that you own the structure but not the land it's standing on. At least they weren't renting. At least all of their payments weren't going straight into some avaricious landlord's pocket with no tax benefits to be found. Still, the young couple chafed under the rules.
After surveying all the houses in their price and commuting range, they'd seen enough to jump at a modest place with an nice open floor-plan in a decent neighborhood. The fact that it had a garage door still attached was a definite plus. The lack of graffiti on the walls was also appreciated.
The thrill of home ownership has since mutated into a Bataan Death March of home improvement.
As you pull up to the property, the first site that greets the eyes is the impressive expanse of weeds and composted tanbark. Closer examination reveals two or three levels of plastic reinforcement mesh that was left over from several attempts to lay sod. Under the mesh you'll find not one, but two sprinkler systems. One was abandoned after the newer system was installed by scratching shallow vees in the dirt and laying PVC. Needless to say, too much of the pipe is exposed. Planning, digging, tilling, amending, planting… these are all things I don't need to pay someone else to do.
Once inside the house, you'll notice the skylights that we did pay someone else to do. Although their installation is not cosmetically perfect and the process taught me a lot about working with contractors, these skylights have improved our lives to a ridiculous extent. The living room used to be a cave. Now we've got more natural light than we know what to do with and, thanks to my wife's insistence, we can flood our house with fresh air with a few cranks.
If you walk into the kitchen, you'll see the new floor we laid after scraping up three layers of linoleum. It was like an archeological dig investigating the decided lack of taste for the last three decades. Witness the oak cabinets languishing under at least three layers of inexpertly applied paint, the Formica counters that have suffered under a generation of morons using them as cutting boards.
The sliding-glass doors lead you to the bonus room. We're almost done with rebuilding the whole darned thing: nine windows, two doors, 50 feet of concrete siding, wallboard, insulation, and custom-fabricated lumber. Oh, don't forget about the four gallons of sweat, blood, and tears, to which Harlock himself contributed. I could go on about the cracked stucco, the drainage ditch that swallowed Cleveland, the lack of shower in a bathroom, the aluminum wiring, the alien-pod light in the master bathroom, the interesting rat's nest of plumbing that cost $255 to figure out, the front doors that need replacing, the windows that need replacing… So why do we do it? I used to just shake my head at the folks who climb. Why spend two days in intense discomfort to climb a face that you could just hike up the other side? I think I'm starting to understand.
Pakeha