I live in an ideal location: five minutes from Home Depot.
Even though my house in Albuquerque is not a fixer-upper, I just refinished the faux-Spanish exterior woodwork, am preparing to paint the garage doors and have done lots of landscaping. Call me a home improvement addict.
It’s probably in my blood. My grandfather in Mississippi built a playhouse in his backyard and let me tinker in a cluttered workshop that smelled of cedar shavings. I watched my father remodel our house, and when I became a homeowner picking up a paintbrush was second nature. My children’s first words were “Mommy,” “Daddy” and “paint.”
Do-it-yourself remodeling initially was a financial necessity but became something I enjoyed. My work in public relations immersed me in an exciting but ephemeral stream of issues and ideas. Satisfying as that was, it was refreshing to come home and paint a wall or refinish a floor that would endure beyond the next deadline.
My favorite house was a Gunderson home in Oak Park, IL, that we bought in 1972. It was built in 1911 and had bay windows, oak floors and woodwork, a stained-glass window, walk-up attic and even a laundry chute. The previous owners had modernized the house extensively… in 1936.
We hired contractors to modernize the kitchen and bathroom and finish the attic while I blowtorched layers of paint from exterior trim, rebuilt the front and back steps, and replaced sash cords in double-hung windows. My wife likened stripping layers of wallpaper to archeology. This is what they had in 1940! Occasionally we found buried treasure: I removed a paint-caked light switch cover to discover that it was solid brass and polished it to its original glory.
It’s probably just as well that the home improvement cable TV channel did not exist in those days. I would have been inspired to start knocking out walls, which could have done structural damage to the house and our marriage.
Our money pit was a 1960 ranch house in LaGrange, IL. We bought it in 1992 because it had an ideal layout for our two home offices even though it flunked the home inspection. As soon as we signed the closing papers contractors began busting up the basement floor with jackhammers, excavating the front lawn with a backhoe to strengthen the foundation, replacing bathroom fixtures and pulling up carpeting. When we drove up with the moving van, a carpenter cutting a hole in the roof shouted: “Is this where you want the skylight?” Over the years we remodeled the kitchen, coped with a basement flood and helped put a plumber’s kid through college.
These days I hire tradesmen for difficult projects but still do my own carpentry, finishing and landscaping. I hired landscape guys to move truckloads of dirt into my backyard in Albuquerque (because landscapers charge less than chiropractors) but spread gravel and planted shrubs myself. I refurbished a wooden deck and installed a gas firepit. A neighbor helped me re-sod my lawn and build storage shelves in my garage.
At this point there’s not much left to do my house, but I’m sure I’ll find something. In the meantime, I can watch the home improvement channel on cable TV. And stop by Home Depot to see what’s new.