My writing has been stagnant as of late since I’ve been consumed with another project. I recently bought my first home, a two-bedroom ranch fixer-upper, and went on a whirlwind adventure to get it prepared to move into.
While renting has its advantages (flexibility, freedom from making repairs, etc.), I always knew I wanted to be a homeowner.
I’m no contractor, but with a father in the trades, I was fortunate enough to grow up around people who understand how to create something out of a stack of lumber, or a dated 70 year old house.
In a three-week span, we removed all the carpet and wall paneling from the living room and bedrooms, sanded and repainted the plaster in what became my bedroom, applied a new skim coat of textured joint compound and painted in my new office, repainted the kitchen, and installed around 400 square feet of laminate flooring.
The flooring job is revealing. In my bedroom, I did the installation with the help of my younger brother. In the living room, my dad helped. The quality of work between the rooms is noticeable. My dad is much more talented, and unlike me, isn’t tempted to rely on the old saying “close enough for government work”. Or in my case: “It’s going to be covered up by an area rug and my bed anyway.”
It’s been a while since I had the chance to work side-by-side with my dad. Growing up, I helped him around the house, but in the almost eight years since I left home for college, I haven’t done much with him.
He and my mom rebuilt a house that was in much worse shape than the one I just bought from the ground up in the early 90s just before I was born, and built on a large addition when I was a pre-teen. Taking on a much smaller house gave me a sense for the amount of labor and skill involved that I never had before.
There’s been a renewed appreciation for physical labor and the craftsmanship that goes into utilitarian pursuits like houses in our culture lately. This is a good thing, because manual labor is hard. Manual labor and having the finished product look good and function correctly is harder.
Not only have I worked with my dad, we find ourselves talking more. We don’t always have a lot in common to talk about, since he’s a tradesman, I’m a cog in the modern knowledge economy, but as homeowners and DIYers we have something in common, and now I have a need for his extensive understanding of houses and the systems in them.
With a long list of things still to be done, we’ll have many busy and productive Saturdays to look forward to.
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