I showed mechanical aptitude at an early age. I was tearing down and rebuilding my bike
when I was in elementary school. I was
barely a teenager when my father had to replace our dishwasher and balked at
the cost quoted to install the new one. “My son will do it,” he
proclaimed. It was a valuable, though
shocking experience for me. I learned that the circuit breaker for appliances
is usually different than the ones for the lights and plugs in the same
room. I was 115 volts smarter when I
finished.
During my college years I did construction on and off
depending on my class load. In my
twenties and thirties I did a lot of work on my houses because I needed to save
the money. In my forties and beyond I
was happy to write a check for those same tasks. Manual labor, though
dignified, is a young man’s game.
Last spring a pipe broke and caused water damage at our
home. Hottie had to almost resort to
stalking to get a contractor to come and give a quote for the repair. Parts of three rooms were affected. The job was small, yet complex enough to make
it unattractive to contractors. To bring this story to a quick conclusion, we
got the quote but the contractor never showed up to start.
After my patience expired I just dusted off my old tools
and started to get to work. After coming
home from work and eating dinner I would go downstairs, turn on the music and
get to work. When the CD played through
two, sometimes three times, I would stop and clean up.
After work one day early in the project I went to the
store and bought five 4’x8’ sheets of drywall.
As I stood in the checkout line in my fancy work clothes a Hispanic man
in a paint stained sweatshirt looked at me and the sheetrock on the cart and
remarked, “You don’t look like a hanger.”
Various implements of destruction
As anyone who has done construction work has learned
through painful experience it is infinitely easier to build something new compared
to repairing and trying to match existing structure. True to form, this project involved shimming,
blending and the exclusive use of screws instead of drywall nails. The framing was uneven and the wood seemed to
be either petrified or rotten.
My resentment at having to do this in the first place was
eventually offset by the knowledge that a contractor would be in a hurry and
would take shortcuts to try and speed up completion. Everyone hates taping and mudding except me. I
am not fast, but if I can take my time the finished product is usually pretty
good. Thin layer, sand, thin layer,
sand. Big knife, then bigger
knives. Thin layer, sand, thin layer,
sand. Smooooooth.
My original goal was for the area of the repair not to
stick out and look worse than the area around the repair. As I progressed it quickly became evident the
opposite was true. I found myself blending
in old patches and repairs near the area of damage that were there when we
bought our house. A mud knife and a tub
of joint compound does not a craftsman make. Sloppy work only looks sloppier
when coated with a layer or two of paint. I can’t imagine the idiot who did it
looking at it and thinking, “That looks good….”
Much like farming, the day to day efforts seem almost
pointless until the accumulation of my daily work finally amounted to
something. When I put the primer up it
revealed the need for more blending in a couple areas. Because I had invested the time, my time, my
valuable old-man-who-would-prefer-to-pay-someone-else time, I did not hesitate
to stop, go back, and make it right.
Everything took a little longer than it should have. As it progressed it looked marvelous. As
always, Hottie had picked out some amazing colors. Between Hottie and myself I think we made
thirty trips to the store for various supplies.
After I finished painting it turned out I needed to do
more work on the floors that I had expected. With momentum behind me I donned a
respirator and removed the old floor tiles and boxed them up and took them to
the dump. Then a quick coat of paint on the concrete floor just to be safe.
Yeah, its a hallway.....
In the end all of the hard work on this project is a lot
like buying new underwear; it may mean a lot to me, but it is invisible to everyone
else.
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