the handyman

Jump to Comments

When we bought our suburban home it was under the notion that we would fix it up, sell it and use the profits to move into a hipper, more urban neighborhood. Five years later we are still here and it doesn’t look like we are going anywhere anytime soon so I have reluctantly embraced my suburban kingdom with some regret in our choice of painting most of the walls Navajo white. The house had a lot of let’s just say deferred maintenance when we moved in so we squired away in the kind of scary basement while my husband (the handyman) in the evenings and on the weekends did some serious home improvement. Because he worked construction for 10+ years (he is seriously the guy who when you walk in the room is watching a woodworking program where some Canadian in a flannel shirt is explaining which drill bit to use next) he doesn’t like other people to work on his house so it took a lot of convincing for me to get him to agree to hire out the job of installing new linoleum in our kitchen and upstairs bathrooms (another regret was being convinced by a family member that hardwood in the kitchen was not a good ’selling’ point). At the time, it had been several months of major projects (the walls and ceilings were covered with brown nicotine from 30+ years of chain smoking so had to be scraped, chemically cleaned and then painted, the original carpets had to be removed and the sub-flooring even replaced due to kids and lots of cats, hardwoods had been installed, sanded and polished) and I was sick of living in the damp basement and ready to move upstairs. I managed to convince the handyman that the tools he would need to buy to install the linoleum were not worth the money because in our future dream hip urban abode we would only have tile and wood. So, we hired a guy and paid him $100 and about two weeks later realized because it was peeling that he had cut and pieced the linoleum in the kitchen right in front of the stove. I swallowed hard realizing that this error meant that it would be a long time coming before I could convince the handyman of outside help again.

Contractor experience #2 came about a year later when our bathtub faucet sprung a serious leak and we had to get it fixed immediately because we were going out of town. Except for the plumbers showing up drunk the first afternoon (one was passed out in the front seat of the pick-up, bed littered with beer cans, total cliche’) their work was excellent and they turned out to be really nice guys.

Contract experience #3 has proved the biggest challenge. With the birth of the Bean we realized that our second story deck, which literally was about to fall down with rot, probably needed to be replaced. I had a 40th birthday party for the handyman last summer and had needed to move the grill to a position to block friends and family from leaning on the outside railing. So, over the past few months the handyman has been working on nights and weekends on a new, improved deck experience for his family. We decided to blow some of our savings (obviously before my tightwad challenge) to build a screened in porch because we both love being outside and it would offer some privacy.

After a few months of no fun on the weekends and probably exhausting asking his friends for help holding posts while he poured concrete and built the base in 95°F+, the handyman reluctantly decided to hire out the framing of the roof (to my relief since it is a second story deck) and he would just do the finish work. All was going well with the contractors until they left late on a Friday evening saying the framing was done and the roofers would be here on Monday morning to put down the shingles. The handyman asked about rain and they shrugged it off with a simple “it shouldn’t rain this weekend.” Well, it did and we woke up to the dogs freaking out at 4:30 am because water was pouring through our ceiling fans in the room where they sleep off the deck. The handyman dragged a ladder and a tarp up to cover the hole and drove directly to Home Depot when it opened at 7:00 am to buy the needed plastic sheeting. When the contractor finally showed up later that morning it was basically secure and he shrugged off their mistake as only minor ceiling damage. The roofers arrived early Monday morning and the bean and I were enjoying a nice cup of organic French roast (me not her) when I heard a major crash in my office. I ran in to see the entire ceiling had collapsed and my dogs cowering in the corner of the kitchen with Hazel squeezed tight behind the recycling bin. My stomach twisted in knots when I realized that the bean and I had been in there at the computer just 10 minutes earlier and now all was covered to capacity with wet insulation and sheet rock.

I managed to stay cool over the next week while the repairs were completed (I give them credit for taking care of it quickly) and the handyman has since put the railings up so we can be out there safely and last night we finally were able to enjoy a cool, breezy evening deck experience with friends so it has all been worth it. I bought a futon off Craigslist (really nice) for $100 so we plan to even sleep out there this fall.

Maybe I’ll wait a few months before I bring up the idea of building raised beds for my next Spring gardening project, though.

6 Comments

Filed under handyman, suburbs