fixer-uppers

Room for Improvement

/ Ann Coleman / 73 Comments

One of the downsides of buying “fixer-upper” houses is that they require a lot of work.  Over the years my husband has become adept at hanging dry wall, replacing basic plumbing fixtures, doing light carpentry, etc.  My job is usually painting and assisting, although once I surprised him by widening a doorway with my trusty crowbar.  (Sadly, my husband wasn’t impressed.)   But some jobs require a professional, and that’s when things get a little tricky.

The problem is while I love home improvement projects once they are finished, I hate the process of actually having the work done.  It’s not fun having to live with the noise and dust of demolition, and I’m not a fan of having workers in my house, no matter how nice or professional they are.  It never fails that if I get up extra early to be showered and dressed before the crew arrives, they don’t show up until around ten in the morning.  But if I dare to venture down into the kitchen to get my early morning Diet Coke, three carpenters are sure to come in the back door, calling out a cheerful “hello” while pretending not to notice I’m still in my pajamas.  You get to know the people who work in your house, but we don’t need to know each other quite that well.

Our latest project was supposed to be tearing out the carpet in the small family room off our kitchen, leveling a small section of the floor and laying down a new laminate floor.  What it turned into was the complete demolition of the entire floor (you could see the slab the room sits on), redoing most of the joists and then laying a new sub floor, laminate floor, baseboards and thresholds.  They also repaired some hidden holes in the exterior walls (we were wondering how a chipmunk got in our house).

None of this was easy.  I know because I could hear the workers complaining as they struggled to remove wood that was rock hard and nailed in with what seemed to be a thousand nails per square foot.  And just to make things extra fun, the nails were so old that the heads often came off when they were trying to pry them out.  I thought the worst was over when they began laying the new floor, but soon discovered that involved using the loudest nail gun I’ve ever heard.  And of course the sound of it terrified our dog Finn, who promptly took refuge on our antique and recently-refinished dining room table.

The project is just about complete as I write this, and the new floor really does look good.  It’s nice to know that the chipmunk entrance is now blocked off and new insulation has been installed.  A few hours with a good vacuum and a few dozen dust cloths should clean up the last of the mess, and then we get the fun job of moving our heavy furniture back into the room and finally placing my Christmas decorations where they belong.

Right now I’m swearing we’ll never tackle another home-improvement project, but I know that isn’t true.  Time has a way of making bad memories fade away, and eventually we’ll add that dormer to our bedroom I’ve been wanting for years.  All I ask is when that day comes, please ignore my whining and complaining.  Because no one likes to be reminded they really should have known better….

Renovation Blues

/ Ann Coleman / 35 Comments

At first, it always sounds like a good idea.  We’ll replace the old bathroom floor, which was installed so poorly that the tiles were starting to pop up, with a new one that we actually like.  We’ll fix the mantel on the fireplace in our living room, and while we’re at it, let’s fix the broken water spigot on the side of the house that leaks every time we turn the hose on and replace that broken closet door in the basement, too.  We’ll just call our handyman, and he’ll take care of everything!  Nothing could be easier.

Then comes the morning when the handyman shows up with his tools and equipment and gets to work.  Soon every flat surface in the house is covered with a fine layer of grey dust, and my front bedroom has been converted a storage room for the toilet and vanity, as well as a shop vac and various other equipment I don’t even recognize.  Stacks of new tiles and bags of grout are piled in the back bedroom, and our garage is converted into a temporary workshop, complete with a wet saw and sawhorses for working on the doors.

I’m used to having the house mostly to myself during the day, but renovations mean sharing my house with someone who spends his days smashing tiles, cutting copper pipes and ripping mantels out of the wall, as noisily as possible.  He gives me frequent updates of his progress, usually when I’m trying to write a blog post or rushing out the door because I’m late for an appointment.  And at the end of each day, I spend at least an hour cleaning up the dust and dirt that were created from that day’s work.

I find myself beginning to think that we should have just done the work ourselves, until I remember all those times before we could afford to hire someone and we actually did the work ourselves.  I remember how much fun it was to help my husband carry 22 sheets of drywall from the backyard to the basement because a storm was coming.  I remember the time I wallpapered my son’s bedroom, only to have all the wallpaper fall off the next day.  Mostly, I remember the time I helped my husband take down a dying tree in our back yard.  He tied a rope around the upper trunk of the tree, gave it to me and told me to pull hard when he told me to.  Then he went to work on the base of the tree with a chainsaw.  After a few minutes, he yelled “pull,” so I did.  And looked up to see that the tree was falling straight at me.  I did the only sensible thing:  dropped the rope and ran.  Later I checked with our insurance agent just to make sure my husband hadn’t taken out an extra life insurance policy on me.

IMG_1331Eventually, the work is done, and our handyman packs up all his tools and leaves.  He’s actually a very nice man, and very good at his job, but I’m still glad that he won’t be back next week.  I love our new fireplace mantel, and the bathroom floor looks even better than I thought it would.  We have new closet doors in the basement that open and close easily, and I can now turn on the hose without getting sprayed by a jet of water  from the spigot handle.  And sadly, I know it won’t be very long until I find myself thinking, maybe we could ask our handyman to get rid of that popcorn ceiling in the upstairs office, and maybe it’s time to finally put that dormer window in the master bedroom….

Pass It On

/ Ann Coleman / 26 Comments

Recently, I spent a Saturday afternoon at my daughter’s house, helping her paint one of her bedrooms.  I’m one of those rare people who actually likes to paint, so I didn’t mind spending a beautiful weekend afternoon up on a ladder, doing the edging.  Even better, my mother stopped by and offered to pitch in as well by painting some of the trim.  So there we were, three generations of family working together to give a room in my daughter’s house a much-needed sprucing up.  For me, it felt like one of those family bonding moments when the older members of the family get to pass along some of their knowledge and experience to the younger members.  (Which is an increasingly rare thing in theses days of ever-changing technology where the young are usually the ones who teach the old.)

Milentz houseI remember when my husband and I bought our first house and how hard we struggled to turn a very run down “fixer-upper” into a livable home.  We couldn’t have done it without the help of friends and family who loaned us tools (and showed us how to use them), and helped clean up years worth of dirt and grime.  We had a good friend who showed my husband how to build walls, while others helped him assemble our own kitchen cabinets.  I remember clearly how my mother helped me in our overgrown yard, pointing out that the “weeds” I was about to pull were actually just flowers that needed some pruning.  My aunt gave us money to buy kitchen curtains, and my brother-in-law even offered to install a wood-burning stove for us to help with heating costs.  All that support made the process seem so much less overwhelming.

And now that my own son and daughter have bought houses of their own, both of which were fixer-uppers (we never buy anything else in our family), it’s our turn to help.  I paint, do yard work and clean, my husband brings over his tools and shows them how to use them while he’s working on a project, and in the process, we help teach our kids what they need to know to fix up and properly maintain their houses.  Frankly, it feels good to pass along some of the skills, support and knowledge that was given to us.

It’s not that our kids (and their husband and fiancé) couldn’t do it themselves, they most certainly could.  They’re young, hard-working and smart, and what they don’t already know, they’ll figure out.  But I know our help means that they are learning much more quickly, and I believe that they appreciate the support of their family with this important milestone in their lives.  These are the acts that solidify our family bonds, that remind us that we don’t actually have to face every challenge on our own, and that demonstrate the importance of working together to help the people we love.

Sometimes fixing up houses is about so much more than just creating a nice place to live.  Sometimes its also about building memories, strengthening family connections and passing on the best of who we are to the next generation.  It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a paintbrush and a power drill.

Middle Age Selectivity

/ Ann Coleman / 4 Comments

Every once in a while, usually after schlepping up and down the two flights of stairs between our master bedroom and our basement while doing laundry, I think seriously about moving to single-level house.  Moving to a house with a small yard also sounds like a good idea after I’ve spent an afternoon raking leaves or pulling weeds in our large yard.  Sometimes I browse the realtor websites, and I’ve even checked out a few Sunday afternoon open houses.  So far, though, I haven’t seen a single house that has tempted me to actually buy it.

back of houseAnd that’s a huge change for me, since my husband and I have a history of buying, and moving into, houses that could best be described as “fixer-uppers.” (We usually referred to them as dumps.)  Basically, if we found a house that we could afford in an area we wanted to live in, we just figured we could turn the house into what we wanted with a “little bit of work.”  When we bought our first fixer-upper, we didn’t have any particular rehabbing skills, but we did have a strong desire to become home owners, lots of youthful energy and that special kind of optimism that comes only with complete and total cluelessness. We weren’t put off by kitchens with no cabinets, living rooms with orange carpeting, bathrooms with blue toilets or peach-colored tile, basements that leaked each time it rained, or even a dining room with “I love you Mary” painted in huge letters across the wall.

Luckily, we had friends who did have rehabbing skills and were more than generous with their time and expertise.  We spent a lot of time in hardware stores; my husband learned to hang drywall and lay flooring, and I learned that I was a good painter but a bit dangerous with a sledge hammer.  We found a few good handymen to do the work that was truly beyond us.  And we learned to shrug it off when we would tell people which house we had just bought and they responded with, “That house? Seriously?  Is it too late to get out of the contract?”

So I was surprised to realize that I’ve become so picky when it comes to even thinking about buying our next house.  For the first time, I seem to be looking for the perfect house.  These days I’m put off by ugly fireplaces, a master bathroom that’s too small, basement stairs that are too steep…things I probably wouldn’t even have noticed before.  And if I had noticed, I would have simply assumed that it was something we could fix. Where I used to look at fixer-uppers and see only potential, now I just see work, and lots of it.

I guess I no longer have the desire to deal with a rehabbing another house, even if we hired someone else to do it.  I like to think that I’m just burned out after all those years of constantly working on our houses, or that I’ve become more selective in my middle age.  But between you and me, I think the truth is that this particular middle-aged woman is just plain too old to want to fix up another house.