Home Is Where I Lay My Toolbelt
For three years I led a
double life: By day, mild-mannered reporter,
by weekend, courageous
do-it-yourselfer.
By Terence
Loose
The Battle is Joined
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he fact that my first house
came with an ax, a stack of firewood, and some prehistoric tools – but lacked a
stove, shower or patio – should have warned me of the battle I had entered.
Correction, the battle I had gone into serious debt to fund.
But my vision had been blurred
by my new
In this collection we found a half dozen places orbiting our price range. A few had
yellow condemned notices on the front door and all screamed code violation.
When we did get in, we usually wanted straight back out. Upon opening the door
to one crumbling beach cottage, we were greeted by two guys sporting dreadlocks
and a bong.
But we persevered and finally,
on a gray Sunday morning, our real estate agent, Darlene, showed us what she
called “a find.” During the 15-minute ride over to the new prospect, Gayl and I
couldn’t help but grow excited as we asked what we thought were the usual
first-time buyer questions.
“It’s not condemned, right?”
“No more of those, I promise,”
said Darlene.
“Does it have a roof?”
“Of course. Don’t talk crazy.” Darlene
forced out a dismissive laugh.
“Did anyone die inside
recently?”
No answer.
“Darlene?”
“Think location, people, location.”
The little blue 1937 cottage
did have location – but not much more. The structure itself was less than 1,000
square feet, occupying a corner lot of over 7,000 square feet, which was
covered with a mixture of crabgrass and dirt. There was a porch, but no back
patio. A pea gravel driveway led up to a one-car carriage garage with a small
shed attached to its rear.
We parked on the street in
front. It was a beautiful lane that stretched three blocks to a cliff top that
held a view of
The feeling held as we toured
the inside. We saw through the cracked window panes, pooh-poohed the ancient
30-amp bulb electrical, and regarded the 6,000 square feet of dirt as a blank
canvas on which to create our own verdant landscape. We’re young and strong, we
reasoned, we’ll have this place whipped into shape in three months, spend no
more than $6,000. By the new year we’ll be having
dinner parties.
Code Blue
The first hint that we were in
way over our heads slammed home with our initial project: The painting of the
interior. This we saw as a minor, even fun, project, but one that was much
needed since the entire interior was an authentic hospital blue.
We bought a primer that claimed
to cover anything in one coat. It was called Kills, and the minute we saw the
name we new it was for us. But after spending our first Saturday morning
coating the living room with the stuff, the sickbay atmosphere still surrounded
us.
“I think I still see hospital,”
Gayl said, and we pushed our faces close to one wall and squinted. The blue
seeped through the Kills like an infection. Apparently, the paint the last
owner used to coat the walls was the most ornery of oil-based concoctions.
“Let’s move on,” I said.
We pried open a five gallon
drum of Bear premium paint. Gayl had chosen tundra as a color – “sort of a
parchment yellow with life,” the bubbly sales clerk had said.
We threw ourselves at the walls
with dripping paint rollers, fighting the blue with good American fury. Eight
hours later, after slathering on two coats of tundra, we toasted our victory
with a bottle of wine and fell exhausted into bed, the strong smell of paint
spinning us into unconsciousness.
The next morning, holding our
coffees in hand and studying our handiwork, we watched as the blue oozed
through. The more we studied it, the bluer it became.
“It’s like a cancer,” I said,
my nose six inches from the wall.
We declared all-out war on the
hospital blue. Another coat of Kills, two more of tundra.
The walls were now caked with half an inch of paint, but we had done it. The
blue was eradicated; the walls were in remission.
But as with all great
victories, ours had come at a cost. The massive amount of energy it had taken
to claim our living room dissuaded us from attacking the rest of the house. The
fight was just too tough. Instead, we rationalized that the paint was mere
cosmetics, low on our modest home’s priority list. There were still structural
battles to be waged: We wanted a patio and lawn by summer, which also meant
erecting 200-feet of fence and installing a sprinkler system; we still had no
shower – we took baths, surrounded by open walls of two-by-four studs; our
washing machine had no plumbing; four windows had top-to-bottom cracks; we brushed
our teeth in the kitchen sink. The list went on. And with both of us working
full time to pay for this castle, time was not on our side.
Besides, because we felt it
would be easier to paint an empty house, most of our furniture was still piled
in the small carriage garage, which had been strategically placed in the lot’s
lowest part so that with each rain an inch of mud flooded in.
We decided living like this was
more depressing than living in a hospital waiting room. So, nearly a month after
we became homeowners, the barrels of paint replaced our furniture in the garage
and we moved in.
Notes from the (cold) front
Looking back, I can only hope
that I added a bit of yuletide ambiance to our neighbors’ Christmas parties.
I’m speaking, of course, of those evenings when I, clad in lumberjack shirt,
jeans and wool cap, marched into our would-be backyard and chopped firewood by
the light of a camping lantern. The pleasant ocean breeze that had seduced us
in early October turned, in the dead of winter, to an arctic wind. This, along
with our beautiful wood floors and authentic 1937 wood windows, insured a
thorough, deep freeze. So while other Newporters
checked their thermostats and shopped online, I practiced my Jack Nicholson
impression and scared the hell out of the neighbors.
But by then the neighbors were
most likely used to the eccentricities – or sympathetic to the plight – of the
Looses. Most projects were not too kind on their eyes. When, for instance, in
November I retiled the bathroom floor, I had to remove our only toilet daily,
reinstalling it when the work day was done. Since it always dripped a bit of
water and the front door, leading to the front porch, was the closest exit
point, that’s where it went. For the five days leading to Thanksgiving, the
neighbors got a view of our toilet, resting next to our “Welcome” mat in lieu
of a potted plant.
Then there were those awkward
early morning meetings on my neighbors lawn after a
night of blustery
One day, while standing in the
second bedroom, which was to be my home study, but now more closely resembled
the Tool Barn at Home Depot, Gayl said, “It’s February, and we still have
sheets on the windows.”
“Right, but look at the bright
side,” I said. “Our credit cards are almost maxed-out. Eventually, they’ll have
to stop us.”
The Longest Yard
Again we decided a graceful
defeat was better than an escalated and prolonged assault on the interior.
Besides, summer was for outdoors; it was time to turn our attention to creating
a backyard.
First, we had to establish a
perimeter, so I spent a few weekends researching how-to books on building
cinderblock walls, then decided writing a check required much less heavy
lifting. I’d make up the money by erecting the rear fence and gate myself. This
I did, building 50 feet of fence in dubious record time.
Next, we turned our attention
to sod. Surely we could lay that ourselves. Turns out
we could – in one excruciatingly painful 14-hour work day. After paying
professionals to install a web-like sprinkler system, we took delivery of four
towering pallets of sod. From dawn until dusk Gayl and I pushed and pulled 252
30-pound paddies of
“I want a condo with a roof
deck,” Gayl said that night while straining to lift a slice of pizza to her
lips.
But the next day, as the new
sprinkler system misted the green expanse, making every blade glisten with
pride, we felt we had reached a milestone: Growth, progress, suburbia.
Two months later, when I had to
rent a trench digger from Red-E Rentals (every employee of which knew me by
name) to tear a hole the length of the backyard
because of a faulty gas line, the feelings were just as poignant: Death,
recession, forced labor. But after a few days of hacking away at petrified
eucalyptus tree roots and almost missing sprinkler lines, we had gas again. Which is nice for cooking and hot showers.
July Fourth came and went and I
truly believe that if we had had a patio on which to place the barbeque, we
would have had a party. But come Labor Day, the very impressive 15-by-30-foot
patio, complete with fire pit, accent lighting and stone walkway, still existed
only on paper. So after spending yet another four weekends immersed in
do-it-yourself patio books and laying down a highly suspect grid of concrete
forms, I called in professionals.
In three days, we had what I
had been craving for almost a year: a way to walk from my back door to my car
without sloshing through mud. And all it took was 20 seconds of filling out a
small piece of paper with some bank information on it. This novel idea of small
promissory notes to escape back-twisting jobs quickly became the new rage in
the Loose household. When those failed, we pulled out
the plastic.
Over the next nine months we
used this tactic for a new roof (during the worst El Nińo
year in a decade, ensuring a 30% increase in price); new exterior paint (but
not before painting the entire house ourselves, ensuring a 30% increase in
price); and central heating. We still worked hard on weekends, finishing the
planting, installing gates and planning out the yet un-tamed front and side yards, and equally hard during the week to placate our
cavalry of creditors.
There was no denying that
progress was being made on our home, but it came with hidden costs: Gayl and I
now regarded Home Depot trips as opportunities for quality time.
Peace Talks
Flash forward to three years
from our move-in date. Like most dysfunctional, obsessive people, we decided to
change directions just as the first flash of light flickered at the end of the
tunnel. The domestic life proved too challenging; instead we’d buy a 25-year-old
boat and sail to the south seas. The new plan demanded
cash; which meant we’d need to sell our home; which meant we’d need to finish
our home.
We consulted a friend and real
estate agent, asking what we needed to do for a painless sale. The blue walls
had to go, of course, the kitchen counters needed to be tiled and the floors
needed a touch-up stain. So, three years after we moved in, we did what we
should have done the first month: hired professional painters.
We tiled the kitchen ourselves, replacing the
sink for good measure, and had the wood floors professionally cleaned and
waxed. Small, unfinished projects occupied another few weeks and then we put
the home on the market. We were worried it would take months to sell a
990-square-foot 1937 cottage in mansion-giddy
The day after we signed the
papers, I woke up early, made coffee, and stood watching the first rays of sun light
up our tundra walls. Gayl came up behind me with a hug.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m not really sure,” I said.
“But I think I’m…relaxed.” ţ