8 Reasons Why Remodeling is the Job for Me
1. Power Tools are a Blast
Anyone who does not understand the statement above, has never felt the thrill of holding a sleek new scroll saw, nail gun or side grinder. Take my first Dremel, which also happens to be my only Dremel. For those not baptized into the church of power tools, a Dremel, according to Wikipedia, is a brand of electrical implement used to poke, drill, torque, screw, cut, pulverize, abrade, scrape, chop, rip or saw. They destroy stuff, basically. My Dremel is an oscillating saw, which means that it quivers with such intensity that it disintegrates anything in its path except for diamonds and vibrantium. Even squeezing the handle too aggressively can destroy the integrity of flesh. Helen, who revealed her name to me after first use, is my power tool of choice. She remains by my side, and will stay there forever, or at least until I finish removing this god-forsaken linoleum.
I do not want to go too far into the next reason why power tools are awesome, but simply put, they all vibrate. Last time I checked, an entire industry is based around stuff that does nothing but vibrate, whereas these beautiful tools, as I indicate above, do all kinds of other neat stuff. At the end of a long hard day of grinding floors, there is nothing like the hour-long sensation of ants crawling feverishly over your hands and up around your arm. Thank you, Helen…
2. My Crusade Against Linoleum
Since I’ve already mentioned it, I will now reveal my personal remodeling vendetta: the existence of linoleum. This stuff is evil. Beyond the fact that it looks like petrified Naugahyde stamped with Garanimal prints, it is essentially permanent. The life span of linoleum is roughly equivalent to that of a freshly formed neutron star.
Now that it is my mission to eradicate it, I have become something of an expert on how to remove linoleum. Here is what you will need should you choose to join the cause: A sledgehammer, crowbar, pliers, a Dremel oscillating saw like my Helen, and a full wheelbarrow of fortitude. Please do not forget to arm yourself with the absolute PPE essentials: work gloves, glasses, facemask, comfortable beach towel and Depends brand underwear. You are going to be at this for a while.
One thing to remember about the devils that install linoleum, they are fiendishly clever. Those that laid it down in Rebecca’s home affixed the stuff to the subfloor with military grade adhesive, enough brads to fill a reasonably-sized backyard, and a series of strategically placed railroad spikes. Meet your enemy folks. Prepare to writhe on the floor like a worm. This will not be easy…
Critical Last-Minute Note: I thought I fully grasped the scope of my foe. Turns out I know nothing. During my intensive research on this project, I have found that linoleum is not actually linoleum at all. Or rather, in transit from its British roots to the new world, it spawned off a far more noxious variant - sheet polyvinyl chloride. I am vaguely sure now that this is the material I encountered, but the truth is, we do not truly know what we are battling. You win this round, linoleum, or whatever you are…
3. I Autograph My Work with Flawlessness
I credit my mentor for her fine work during my development as a remodeler. She is also my fiancé. Rebecca, whom I will intermittently refer to as Bex, has a real eye for talent. After all, she chose me to help her work on this house. And yet I admit, when first exposed to this work, I was concerned about my innate ability.
“I may suck at this, you know.”
“You’ll be fine. We’ll stick you on light paint duty.”
This calmed my apprehension. Cleverly, Bex next sucked me in with some power tools and demolition work before I realized that she had openly lied. There is no such thing as light paint duty. Painting is serious business. Every stroke and roll matters. Once my brush hit the wall, however, I knew I had a knack for it.
“How’s it coming?” Bex calls from the kitchen, where she has almost finished installing the soft touch doors on the cabinetry she designed.
“I’ve finished the area right here,” I say, pointing to a now perfectly white swath about the size of a largish watermelon. “I think it looks pretty good!”
“Oh. I see…” Bex has appeared behind me. She nods. “Don’t be afraid to really get paint on that roller head. You’ll find it goes a little faster.” I can tell that she is pleased.
Two hours later, I have finished an entire wall! Cabinets now complete and drywall behind the oven mudded, Bex is now on the phone with her sister. “We introduced Bill to painting today.” Bex sighs. She notices me watching and smiles. “He is very deliberate. If he ever finishes it will be perfect.”
I smile too. I know exactly what she means. It feels wonderful to mark your work with flawlessness.
4. I am Now Officially Handier than My Dad
Like most sons, I spend about 75% of my human energy trying to best my father in every conceivable activity. And naturally, even though Dad passed away more than thirty years ago, I am still actively engaged in this competition. I swear it is healthy. For example, I am a better tennis player. He was a better long-distance runner. My Dad was a skilled businessman, likely more successful in that arena than I will ever be. That’s a tough one to admit, and difficult to calculate, because you have to take into consideration inflation rates.
Which brings us to my most recent father/son victory. Up until the point I met Rebecca, my crowning achievement in handiness was that I had constructed a toy boat out of duct tape that proved more seaworthy than those built by my five-year-old daughter and her buddy Webster. Granted, it was a cool boat, but not quite enough to get a wink from say, Joanna Gaines (sorry Bex). In fact, I remember my ex-father-in-law remarking, “Your husband is not sufficiently equipped to be a homeowner.” Ouch.
Fortunately, however, the handiness high jump bar was not set particularly high by my Pops. “Oh shit, your Father didn’t even own a toolbox. The word handy wasn’t even in his vocabulary unless it had to do with boats or a kids school project.” This was the actual response of my Mother when asked about her husband’s hardware IQ. Sounds good for me, right? Thing is, he was great with boats, and with his help, I won the Underhill Central Pinewood Derby.
Enter Bex. Under her tutelage, I can now paint a whole room in less than a week or two, take down a pony wall, smash tile, and operate Helen without serious injury – which is still not the case, however, with a sledgehammer and crowbar as I will discuss later. Sorry, Dad, you are now toast – literally - and this is just another notch in my toolbelt.
5. Injury Stories
Unlike my fiancé, who finds the most outlandish ways of injuring herself - take for example, the time she got her finger wedged in the ass end of a sea-doo requiring the intervention of both the fire department and a certified watercraft mechanic - I am increasingly proficient at harming myself in proper manly ways. Short of a war wound, there is no more dignified injury than those sustained with tools in hand. Women, in particular, perk up at the mention of hard work and blood.
Which, apart from the excruciating pain, is why I am so excited when I mash the tip of my index finger between a sledgehammer and the head of a crowbar. Twice. Within a two-minute span. The first of my injuries in the battle against linoleum. After the second smash I know that whatever I have done will look gruesome. I gently peel off my work glove to reveal what looks like Rudolph’s nose attached above my second knuckle. I run to show Bex.
“Oh Lord, what did you do?” She cries, descending immediately from her perch at the top of a ladder where she has almost completed a project to make our ceiling beams look like they came from a 16th Century abbey. Once on the ground, she isolates my finger for inspection. Everything but the nail is enveloped in a bulbous blood blister.
“That is hideous, baby! Does it hurt?” Bex looks me in the eye and strokes my hair with her free hand. “You poor thing!” I am now quite sure that the benefits of this trauma will far outweigh the pain. We discuss treatment. Then she verbalizes the compulsion every woman feels in such situations, “You know we will need to pop that.” But I am not really listening, lost in her attention, already looking forward to the adventures of my next remodeling injury.
6. Camp in Your Own Home!
I have deeply joyful childhood memories of camping with my father. We would drive to upstate New York each summer on a fishing trip, renting a trolling boat to ferry us out to Mary Island in the St. Lawrence Waterway. Making do without the amenities and trappings of the civilized world was an exploration of self-sufficiency and bonding through teamwork. That yearly journey in my childhood did much to define happiness for me, a happiness that I would unexpectedly rediscover recently.
The renovation is in full swing, and I am about to make pasta, full of joy. The new oven has arrived! One burner glows ruby hot like a campfire at the center of the kitchen. For a moment I wonder if I can grill fish over it. Extension cords snake off into the dining room to provide power. Everything else has been stripped from this room. Cabinets, counters, fridge, the sink. Even the lights are gone, in fact, I am racing against dusk to finish the meal. I peek out the window to the back yard. There is the bald spot where I dump my scalding pasta water, leftover coffee, and dish cleaning buckets. Next to it is the actual firepit, where I burn all our demolition waste wood. Bex is not happy about this. I tried to explain that the rule of nature takes over in times of extreme hardship, but she is still concerned that the homeowner’s association will retaliate. What would the pioneers do?
I trudge off across the house and upstairs to fill my spaghetti pot in the bathroom. Before the new faucet was installed yesterday, we were forced to consider getting fresh water from the toilet. The dogs seem to enjoy it. At the end of the hall, Rebecca is constructing something in our bedroom that I do not yet comprehend. She has made it clear that none of us are to enter this room indefinitely. Bridget, our lab, looks up at from a bare mattress in the guestroom. We will all curl up there later as the darkness falls. Time for ghost stories. It is summer, the season for camping, and I know my father would be proud.
7. I Am Better at this than the Fool Before Me
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. All matter is energy. These are the laws that govern our surroundings, immutable and distant, without which the world would be a foreign place. Remodeling exposes another of these concrete rules. Regardless of your talent, regardless of your vision, the original work you replace will always be dreadful. And the painter, tiler, carpet installer or carpenter will always be a drooling halfwit.
Talk to any professional in the industry and they will launch into endless examples. In fact, it will be difficult to shut them up. I asked Bex to give me a couple of her favorite stories before writing this section, and even though I left the room fifteen minutes ago, I am reasonably certain that she is still talking about the time some imbecile painted a wall around a bed headboard. Perhaps the dogs are listening.
It is uncanny how common and drastic bad work can be. Consider the evidence in our home. Never mind the fact that the previous owners decided to install tile over the top of sheet vinyl flooring. They also rolled paint, without primer mind you, over floral wallpaper in the master bathroom. The worst work lies in the basement and can only be described as a design calamity that borders on a health hazard. Rebecca believes the previous owners were confronted by a bad drywall job – evidence of previous idiots behind our idiots. Anyway, their solution to this problem, was to slather plaster all over the walls, like multiple buckets worth. Then, with some twisted tool they whipped the stuff and molded it into mounds and sharp peaks and let it dry. The resulting effect is a corridor that looks as though you are surrounded by Marshmallow Fluff, but if you lean in too close, it rips through your shirt. Yup. My work is better. Case closed.
8. God Chasteneth He Whom He Loveth
Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Hebrews 12:6-11
I was a weird kid, spending hours trying to understand a world in which an all-knowing and all-loving God would allow for the existence of suffering. Decades later, remodeling has helped me reconcile this dilemma. The lesson did not arrive quickly, however, or painlessly. As I have come to understand, this is the chasteneth portion of his plan.
As I lay splayed half-prone on a beach towel, endlessly shaving away remnants of linoleum, I have time to consider my place and status in his creation. At first, I am unhappy, lost in discontent. Bex seems so light and unburdened, flitting about with her brush and roller, lit from below as she hovers on a ladder. She appears almost blissful, while I leer up from below, bitter and fallen, exiled to an infernal mess.
Weeks later, a discipline now guides my hand. I have destroyed one oscillating saw, and I have been gifted my Helen as a replacement. The blister, long since popped and drained, has healed into a callused scar. Petulance has been replaced with grim determination. Bex notes the gouges in the floorboards borne of my frustration. She points to the minefield of staples and nails that remain. This job torments, but I labor on.
The morning of May 20th dawns like any other. Only I am aware of the potential significance of this day. By noon I know that the impossible will indeed happen. I will finish the floors. Like reaching the final pages of a Tolstoy novel, I am weary, proud, and wistful. This work has changed me, trained me. As my fiancé comes through for a final check, I know my work will pass. Helen and I trim up a few areas unnecessarily as Bex kneels to feel for anything that will impede the luxury vinyl flooring that has waited so long in in boxes by the fireplace. I nod farewell to my beach towel and whisper thanks to my beloved Helen.
“This looks great, love. I can’t believe you did it! No more floors…”