Home Improvement

One of the joys of selling a house is finally being required to do all that stuff you vowed you'd do to the house when you moved in.

This is the first time we have moved straight from one house to another, so there is also all the stuff to be dealt with before moving in: quite a bit in this case, because of the need to make the entrance and master bedroom and bathroom wheelchair accessible, at a minimum. There are a lot of other things that would be nice to do, but can wait, like putting a full bath in the master bedroom or repainting the hideous 80s dark wood flat-front cabinets. 

DOB proposed that we divide and conquer--I would handle the old house (a few random handyman projects that I could either do or be here when kind friends and relations came to help with) and he would handle the new house (getting bids, making lots of decisions, and hunting up funds). It was a logical system, but the lines invariably blur somewhat.

I am not handy. This is not a gender thing, it's a complete physical ineptitude thing. Still, I want to do my part, besides just calling people up and fixing sandwiches.  For the most part, I stuck to demolition. I managed to rip out the old wallboard in the basement stairwell without poking through into the laundry room or breaking my leg on the stairs, so that was an accomplishment. Also it involved burying two rats that had drowned in one of the garbage cans.

Two more big-ticket projects were replacing a broken window and painting under the eaves. Fortunately a friend suggested I check out the Habitat for Humanity store and there was, amazingly enough, a window that almost exactly fit in our very strangely-sized window slot for a third of the price of the special order from the hardware store. Also cheap paint in a color that didn't match, but no color would have matched. The color of our house is unique in human history. So it all came out much cheaper, which always makes me happy.

For a few brief moments I felt the glow of handiness and visions of improvements on the new house, planned and undertaken solely by me, danced in my head.

Then I returned to earth, where the children had reorganized the house, there was nothing to eat, and I was so exhausted I wanted to spend the entire next week in bed. I may decide that 80s dark wood cabinets are just fine.