A few years ago HomeOwnerMan and Wifegirl were entertaining SisterChick in the new kitchen that they had just remodeled. SisterChick looked around in amazement at the new tile floor, the new cabinets and countertops, the lighting, the extra sink, the exhaust hood and island, and asked, “How did you ever learn to do all of this? And how did you get the nerve to take on a project of this size?” HomeOwnerMan could see a sudden look of regret in her eyes the moment the words left her mouth. It was the look of regret Kenny Rogers must see when one of his friends says, “Do you want to play poker tonight?” There is no taking the question back when it leaves the lips, but the regret is hard to hide.
SisterChick had the regret in her eyes because she knew she was going to get an answer. A long answer. A three ridiculously-large-red-wine-glasses-full answer. You see, she knew her little brother HomeOwnerMan better than anyone besides WifeGirl. And she knew there would be no escaping the answer. So she settled in with her first globe of red wine and listened.
“You don’t start with a kitchen,” HomeOwnerMan began, [Even with the narrator’s choice of the word “began” she could tell she was in for it], “you start with a flapper valve in a toilet that just doesn’t seal properly. You go to the hardware store and ask for ‘one of those black things inside the toilet’. You notice the snicker of the grizzled old hardware man as he begins to guess what you mean, asking questions like ‘Was the black thing in the toilet before you sat down’, and later zeroing in on ‘is the black thing in the tank…er…you know…the back part of the toilet?’ You nod your head in a less-than-confident way until he walks you over to the plumbing aisle and points to a red flapper valve. You say, ‘but mine is black,’ and he replies, ‘yeah, they change the color every so often, but it will work for you.’
“So you buy the flapper valve [see how quick a study you are] and rush home to install it,“ HomeOwnerMan continued. “It takes you all evening, because you have several choices to make about how it is installed, but in the end you have a sense of satisfaction as your toilet now starts and stops when you tell it to.
“You move on to patching the drywall where the drunken friend threw a fried ravioli through it. This, you find, takes a bit more skill, but in the end you have the same sense of satisfaction. Soon you’ve put in a backsplash and a paver walk. But still, you don’t feel like you have any super powers, just like a guy with a box of tools and a fixed toilet.
“Then one day, you notice water on your kitchen ceiling below the shower upstairs. ‘This requires the big guns,’ you reason. And while you are at it, you decide it might be time to remodel the bathroom because the tile is an unpleasant pattern and you’ve always wanted a light in the shower. ‘It’s too big a job for me,’ you whimper. So you decide to call a contractor. You grab the yellow pages [this story happened when HomeOwnerMan was still quite young and people used yellow pages] and look for contractors. There are several listed who are local and have half-page advertisements. So you decide to call a few to get estimates. This is where the trouble begins. Of the first nine appointments you’ve scheduled, only two of them actually show up, and one of them is fall-down drunk. The other one spends two minutes looking at your bathroom, measuring it to be 8’ x 8’. He does some fancy mathematics [8 x 8 is 64, times $100 per square foot is, er, $6400 but that sounds like a messy number and they have a nice car so…] he tells you it will be $7000. You avoid dropping over from apoplexy, shake his hand, and tell him you will call him when you’ve made a decision. You want at least three estimates, so you repeat this process twice more and get estimates of $10,000 and $14,000. The guy who gives you the $14,000 estimate even has the nerve to say, ‘You know, it sounds high but it’s not like I’ll be going to Tahiti on your job.’ He then hands you his card, and without even cracking an ironic smile, says ‘Don’t call me next week. I’ll be golfing in Florida.’ [I have not exaggerated this part of the story at all.]
“Distraught, you sit down to re-evaluate. The leak in the kitchen isn’t all that bad yet. But a nagging voice in the back of your head says, ‘You can do it.’ And you think ‘Why not me? I can do this.’ You have a loving wife who believes in you. So you take a trip to the library the following Saturday [this was back when people went to the library to look stuff up] and take out all of their books on bathroom remodeling. You study up on how to tile, how to plumb, and how to drywall. You learn about new materials like cement board with special screws called “rock on”. You pick out tile. You pick out fixtures. You put a light in the shower and tile the entire thing. You tile the floor. You paint with River Rock, a textured paint. And you and WifeGirl transform the room for under $1000. That little feeling of satisfaction has now ballooned into euphoria, because you now have a brand new bathroom and $6000 – $13000 that you would have paid to the fall-down drunk or the golfing guy.
“Now you tackle the deck. You get fancy with the design and materials, using Trex and composite railings. You are complimented by the township inspector on your very detailed drawings. You are a little concerned, though, because the fancy design requires sixteen concrete pilings for support and three concrete pads as stair landings and for the hot tub you are installing, and you have never done any concrete work. So you decide to call a concrete contractor for this. Pulling out the trusty yellow pages, you find six concrete contractors listed. The first one doesn’t ‘do concrete anymore.’ You call the second hear a sweet voice that says ‘Daddy doesn’t live here anymore.’ You press on to contractor number 3, but he ‘won’t be out of prison until next September at the earliest.’ Number 4 is your favorite. He says, ‘yeah, I’ll pour your concrete, but you’ve got to dig all of the holes and frame out the pads.’ You say, ‘but I would be paying you to do that’, to which he replies, ‘that’s back-breaking work, I tell ya.’ Numbers five and six basically have no shot, because you have already succumbed to the realization that you will be learning to pour concrete this weekend. So back to the library you go, this time for books on concrete and masonry.
“As blockhead number four said, it is back-breaking work. You rent an auger, and with the um, er, help, of HomeOwnerSenior, dig sixteen holes for pilings and three pads. You fill the bottom of each with rock, and begin mixing concrete bag-by bag. You’ve got 104 of those suckers at 80 lb. each, so you see the need to outsmart gravity. You fabricate a see-saw on which you sit an 80 lb. bag of concrete, have WifeGirl press down on the other side of the see-saw, raising the bag to the mixer where you tear it open and dump it in, no lifting. And as if by magic, you and WifeGirl are now concrete experts. You complete the deck together, now adding heavy construction to your list of abilities.
“You tackle another bathroom and a laundry room. Then one day, the majors call. You are asked to join the big leagues after kitchen contractors throw numbers at you like $40,000 for their fee only, with materials and subcontractors extra. You go through your period of depression once again, until you come to the realization that you have done all of this before, just not all at one time. So the challenge is no longer the skills, it is the logistics. You learn how to create a Gantt diagram, and orchestrate the ballet that will become your new kitchen. You have it timed out so exactly that the electrical sub-contractor is planning vacations between his pieces of it, and your plumber knows he won’t be in the way of the granite guy. Now the labor is just second nature. You can size up a job, estimate your materials and time, and have time to post about your progress along the way.
“Now you can step back knowing that you earned that cape and mask. You deserve to be called HomeOwnerMan.”
SisterChick takes that last swallow of the third glass of red wine. And she has a new found respect for you. And she’s glad she asked you rather than playing cards with Kenny Rogers. You used to just be her sniveling little brother who tagged along with her and her friends. Now you are that cape wearing sniveling little brother who offers her wine.
HomeOwnerMan: Making the ordinary extra ordinary.