Why is it so-called “home improvement” projects always on look like little dances through the tulips. So easy. So uncomplicated. Swing your right foot this way, raise your arm, adjust your hips, smile and then spin. Weeeeee!
Somewhere along the line (right about when you start) the dance turns into a little dragon that curses, spits and laughs at you. “Easy?” it barks. “It’ll take 15 years to finish, three times the money you expected and I’ll make you bend every nail and flatten your thumb with a hammer.”
Home improvement. Try home deprovement.
I distinctly remember my wife asking how long I thought it would take to get the baby’s room — a converted guest room — done.
“Ahh, no time at all,” I said. “It’ll be easy. Couple of weekends. A jiff. Little of this, little of that, spin around and it’s done. You’ll see.”
The dragon in the bushes laughed. I hate that dragon!
Six months later and I’m only now adding the finishing touches. Which isn’t to say I’m done. It’s what you might call a soft opening. It’s done enough to allow people to see it, but by no means can we signal a grand opening. Please little girl, don’t come too early.
I was so sure it would all be over in a matter of weeks, mainly because while I have accomplished numerous major construction projects at home, that is balanced with the fact that I am a complete imbecile with no grasp of time and the complexity of tasks.
A couple of new outlets, re-do a closet, some crown molding, paint the floor, plaster, build a monorail connecting downtown, install a solar heating unit that has a back-up fission reactor and paint a mural of all the world’s nations with a secret code in it.
Yeah, only a couple weeks.
What was I thinking?
But it is coming together beautifully, I must say, and in comparison, the wife, the dog and I will be living in relative squalor (like a refugee tent) next to her baby palace. Oh, the rest of the house is fine. But the difference is I might actually finish her room before she has grandchildren. I cannot say the same for the rest of the house.
I’ve done it all in here over the years, including a pretty sizable addition on the back of the house in which I did everything from the piers to the roof. And while it’s not level, that’s more due to the fact that nothing in my nearly hundred-year-old house is. (It’s actually unlevel in 62 directions and at least three different dimensions.)
It’s solid, and looks great, but not finished, if only because that one corner of caulking I could never reach to paint is still hovering up there — like the dragon! — laughing at me. “You’re so short, midget boy.”
But even while it might have taken a while, I’m actually working like a deranged lunatic chased by hornets to get it done. Weekend after weekend. Hour after hour. Late into the night and from early in the morning. I’ve been relentless and methodical and single-handedly have kept hardware stores afloat.
And now, after all these months, it’s finally (almost) done. The curtains are hung. The windows are wiped clean. The caulking is painted, and there’s no random spot of unpainted plaster forgotten for eternity and bulging out like a hunchback’s hump … laughing at me.
It really is a palace in there, a virtual dream room compared to the shantytown that is the rest of my house. And I’m so proud and excited. All for a kid who won’t appreciate the details until she’s 33, which is probably about the time I’ll get to that bit of caulking left in the study. Go away dragon, I’m painting here.