Tag: home

Gutted

I was showing a friend pictures from our demolition. The friend’s friend had an op-ed she needed to share. One that bit.

“So, if you hate your house so much, why don’t you just buy a new one?”

Ouch! That throw away comment from a grinning stranger really did burn. It freezes, too.

I, in my shock at that unthinkable thought, objected. Too much, in retrospect, methinks. Too much because her unwelcome comment was based on her observation. Of the evidence. That I provided.

Looking at the photos of the bare and picked over bones of the edifice I had sworn to protect I thought, “What hath I wrought?”

The next day, I hesitated as I stepped onto the porch as part of my daily construction inspection. I gingerly inserted my key. I slowly opened the door. There was almost no floor to speak of–just a bunch of planks that forced me to leap from one to the next at the risk of falling through to the basement below.

And I’ve been stuck here. Right here. For two weeks I haven’t been able to move this post forward. Not able to skip past it. Because I can’t skip it. It has to be dealt with. I have to deal with it.

Usually, I have posts and pieces of posts trolling through my head–all of the time. I sit down and tap them out and hit publish. That’s how it works. Sure, there’s a bit more than that, but not the writer’s black hole I’ve had.

Usually, the hardest ones come out the fastest. Usually.

I’ve been stuck in the unusual.

I’ve reopened this page again and again. I’ve tweaked some words, moved a comma about and walked away. I’ve sat down with a brew in hand and a strict self-imposed deadline to put a bow on it. Three beers later, I successfully avoid any accomplishment. I’ll do it tomorrow. I don’t.

I’d walk into the house and take more photos. I’d look at the skeleton of the house, and see that the specimen is incomplete. Some of the bones are missing. No floor, not just exposed joists, but an entirely missing kitchen floor. No stairway to the second floor, the ladder carefully balanced over the canyon of the basement stairs.

The radiators were all piled up in the former toy room, like the mountains of blocks, legos and Hot Wheels from a recent past.

This week the siding was torn off. The chipped paint along the thin wooden boards were stacked in dumpster number six. Or are we up to seven boxcars of the house toted away? What could be left?

I didn’t know what gutting the house really meant.

GUT: to clean out. strip. decimate. ravage. ransack. disembowel. eviscerate. empty.

That was it. Empty.

I haven’t been able to come to terms with what I’m doing to the house. I started counting what was staying.

  1. The roof. (Which we replaced 8 years ago).
  2. The foundation. (Which is getting parged to shore it up.)
  3. Most of the original sheathing that was diagonally hung, keeping out the elements. (It’s being covered with some kind of new-fangled water impervious wood and then foam insulation and then new man-made siding.)
  4. Most of the original posts and joists. Many of which are being sistered with new, man-made materials.
  5. All of the woodwork and trim in the living and dining rooms. The fake fireplace mantels are STAYING!
  6. I saved the floors in the first two bedrooms, now known as the den and the office. (Over objections of some/one. I can’t let them all go.)

I’m looking at this list and the house that I swore to protect that I can’t recognize and I start hearing Obi-Wan telling Luke that Luke’s father is now more machine than man.

And then I get to thinking. And I feel better. Because in the end, Darth Vader was alright. He kept his soul.

Publish!

Posted on by docthink 1

Realty Reality

This is SpongeBob Squarepants' house in Bikini Bottom. I wouldn't really want to live here.

Why the floor coverings, too? That was really close to the last straw.

They were using the famous local realtor. Great reputation for selling houses for big profit. Nobody talks about how bossy they are, though. It seemed they’re more concerned about maximizing their reputation. Like it would be beneath them if they sold your house for less than too much. Sure, they made more money at bigger sales, but it was more than that. They really stretched the seller. It’s like you worked for them.

When they originally bought the house, the fashion in real estate sales was a cleaned up front yard and a great new door–curb appeal! There were to be cookies taken out of the oven just before the open house to make the place smell homey. In lieu of baked cookies, the fallback was lighting some Yankee Candles with realtor scents like Vanilla Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Snickerdoodle or Clean Sheets with Baked Bread Breeze. But, that was then.

Now, it’s all less is more. Cold granite countertops with nary a fruit bowl, but an $80 flower arrangement is welcome and to be replaced every other day, no spent buds allowed. Also, no fabric–not even curtains–except on a well-styled bed with extra pillows that they pushed you to buy at Target. All to ensure a Marie Kondo/Tiny House minimalism aesthetic only achievable by monks or cartoonists. The latter because they can draw whatever reality they wish. Have you seen Sponge Bob’s house? They never have to figure out where something physically goes. They can simply use their eraser.

The famous realtors are monsters who do not have emotions. They have no empathy or human feelings for things like that mug you got from that conference ten years ago that turned into a great career move or those amazing Timon and Pumbaa life-sized cardboard cutouts from that special premiere screening that the kids got to see.

You were feeling tepid at best about this sale anyway. Your wife got the best job ever. It’s back where she grew up and close to grandparents. You? You can work from anywhere. Bonus, you can charge East Coast rates to clients from your Midwest address. The new house is two-thirds the price and two times the size of your city home. But you would be very happy to stay where you are.

Especially today. When they are coming by with the cameras for the house hunting website and just before the open house next Sunday. Those demon realtors made you invest almost two thousand dollars in fixes and upgrades and cleaning and painting to prep for the sale. Intellectually you agreed that it would pay for itself, but your heart objected to the cleansing of your lives from this house that was a home that knew all of your secrets. All of them.

You felt it the most most, or maybe with finality, when they insisted on pulling up the rugs, to fully expose the wood floors that you had waxed, also at the behest of the brutes. The selling strategy was to open up the rooms visually by removing the clutter of patterns of flowers or geometry on woven wool with a fringe–especially the small section of fringe on the dining room rug that the puppy destroyed. The puppy that grew to that great, fat old dog that you and the girls sent over the rainbow bridge last year. You were saddened especially when you rolled up the rug from the middle bedroom that still bore the faded evidence of  a child’s experiment with dye gone awry.

As you walked down the wooden steps and through the dining room to the front door you felt the hollow echoes of your squared heels hitting the shiny floors, making a sound that hit the bare walls where the mis-framed grade school art hung until last week. You looked around at the emptiness of a house that was overflowed with family and was now stripped to an empty canvas for someone else to color.

You walked out the front door obsessing about the carpets in storage and trying to imagine them in a new house. Really, a new home.

Posted on by docthink 0

Down to the River

Nantucket, the center of the world. A compass and mileage directory.

People stay where they’re from. So people who leave are different.

It’s easy for those of us who have left the farm to look back at those rooted through a long lens. They aren’t like us. And we aren’t like them.

We pretend we don’t understand them, but, without much effort, we could. Since they are us, and we are them.

I grew up in what is now a desert of empty boxes of buildings that once housed three shifts. Of wide boulevards that once moved those shift workers and now cracked by weeds pushing through concrete. The factories and roads are being reclaimed by nature.

Then there is the other nature. The nature of expectations. People, most of them men-people, were expecting to fill those three shifts. Like their fathers, uncles and even grandfathers did. The work was a grind, day-in day-out in a noisy factory, but you earned enough money to raise your family, an awesome health package, a little cottage near a lake and a minor discount on next year’s model. You married your high school sweetheart. You went out with the guys after shift. You did your part.

But now, instead of a cold one on your dock, you’re the protagonist in a Springsteen ode.

And even The Boss doesn’t get you, anymore. He lives in Greenwich. He takes his daughter to dressage competitions. Is that a sport? You played hockey, in the neighbor’s backyard that they flooded after you got your new skates at Christmas.

You never or just barely had a chance at those high-paying factory jobs. You stuck around, waiting for an industry comeback. Instead, the unskilled and semi-skilled jobs that came back paid less. So yeah. You’re disappointed. You’re willing to work hard. But jobs moved across oceans where people get paid pennies and there aren’t all the rules about health and safety and smokestacks that drove work away. The import side of the equation? People from countries not where your people are from with a dollop of terrorism and fear.

Crashed expectations crash into reality.

Those who left are judging those who stayed. Don’t lie. We know them. They are us. And we are them.

Posted on by docthink 0