Intro for my e-book,  Ooops! Memoirs of Cat Lovin' Home-Repair Addict, available for only $2.50 at Lulu.com! I will post a new essay from the book each week.

 

“He Was a Happy Man With a Batch of Cement”

    “He Was a Happy Man With a Batch of Cement.” Those words from Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” really rang home when I reread the play recently. Why? Because I can completely relate to Willy, the salesman who was constantly trying to live up to others’ standards of success. He spent his work hours in misery, trying to feel good about something he didn’t really feel good about. But what he really enjoyed, did well and took some pride in, was his ability to do home renovations.

    I have found myself, to an extent, in the same position. I’ve been able to find fulfilling jobs in writing and teaching over the years, but I think I may have gained the greatest amount of satisfaction from home repair projects I have tackled since moving into this house over 15 years ago.

    If you had asked me before that, if I wanted to spend my time renovating a house, I would have been at a loss for words. It never really entered my mind. But when I tried to make some extra money selling real estate and happened upon this poor neglected house hidden among the trees, and at a price even I could afford ($18,500), I was hooked.

    When I moved into this house it had been abandoned, apparently quite suddenly, by a renter several years before. She had neglected to clean the food from the refrigerator or even take out the 20-some bags of trash she left rotting in the basement. The tiles were popping up off the kitchen floor from many winters with no heat, and the refrigerator was full of maggots, but the rest …. well, aside from the rock wall near the driveway, which magically fell down a week before I moved in, the rest wasn’t in such bad shape. It was just in need of a little sprucing up and painting. But I also had some remodeling ideas of my own.

    With all of its faults, and possibly because of them, since I began renovating this house, I have felt consumed by it, drawn to it, inspired by it, sometimes enslaved by it, and often frustrated. But at the end of the day, when I’ve torn something apart or put something together and I sit back, sweaty, sore and sometimes even a bit bloodied and look at my results, I feel I have really accomplished something.

    This feeling of accomplishment and peace can only be equaled by the more gradual accomplishments of nurturing a garden to full maturity or gaining the love and trust of a cat.

    I see gardening as part of home improvement and have included gardening stories in this book as well. The garden, like the house, is something I’ve put a part of my life into. Every flower that blooms in the summer has a different memory of either the person who gave me the “start” on it, or the dear friend who often mowed them down when trying to be helpful.

    My cats have very little to do with accomplishing home improvement projects, mind you, but they do play a part, as it is a constant challenge to herd them from one room to another so that I can work without having tail brush strokes added to my painting projects or footprints in the tile glue. In addition, I’ve designed much of my house with the cats in mind, from building a catatarium with tiny doors in my walls that lead to it,  to making extra wide windowsills for cat meditation areas (and fly stalking). So, much to the chagrin of cat haters, and hopefully to delight cat lovers, my cats will sometimes appear in these stories as well.

    Because of this house I have spent vacations on top of my roof, removing shingles with everything from a snow shovel to a crowbar, or mixing cement with the kitchen spatula and spreading sealer on the driveway with that same spatula. Many home repair tools are advertised as the best thing since … uh … since sliced-individually-wrapped-processed-cheese-flavored-vegetable oil squares. But I’m a use-what-you’ve-got kinda gal, who refuses to believe that utensils need to be limited to what their names imply. Anything can be a tool and whatever fits in that crack I’m trying to pry apart, or spreads the paint on the floor (kitchen mop?) is open season in my opinion. If it works, use it.

     I offer this book not necessarily as a how-to guide, but as proof that we can all do many small renovation projects ourselves. However, they may not turn out as perfect as those on HGTV, they will undoubtedly take three to four times longer to do, and you will inevitably have to stop and take numerous trips back and forth to the hardware store for parts.

     So why do we take on these projects?  I say “We,”  because anyone who reads this must be a kindred spirit and surely we must learn to see ourselves as a united force: Those who shun the expense of paying an expert, those who enjoy coming up with something a little different from the ordinary, the few , the proud, the incredibly cheap (or poor), but rich with ideas.

    We convince ourselves that we do these things out of necessity because we can’t afford to pay an expert, but we appreciate what we are able to achieve ourselves, and in essence, the act of creating. Never mind the fact that beams aren’t quite plumb, or that a doorway looks more like a teepee than a rectangle. If the door functions, who cares? Forget that you can’t afford the products specified for the task at hand. If you happen to be out of spackling, but have some fat-free sour cream in the fridge, why not use it to fill those nail holes? Have you noticed how it hardens when you leave a bit smeared on your countertops?

    When I’m engaged in a home improvement project, I find it is the time when my imagination soars. I had a friend who helped me out for a summer, and we would sit on the porch after a long day of sweating on the rooftop and bask in the feeling of accomplishment, counting our cuts and bruises, or the new splotches of paint on our paintin’ jeans. He was a talker and I am not, so he would provide me with a long and constant narrative of life’s trials and tribulations, as well as its wonders, and I would sit there, half listening, while at the same time looking around at my surroundings and dreaming of future projects. “I can’t figure out why my telephone bill is so high,” he would say, and I would respond with, “Wouldn’t it be neat to put a gazebo on top of my house?”

    Home improvement is exhilarating, but also frustrating, and definitely addictive. How many early books and stories were written about houses that have consumed the people who owned them? “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “A Rose for Emily,” “The Haunting of Hill House”… Surely this is not a new addiction, but merely one that has been rediscovered with the disintegration of houses made in the times those stories were written.

    I sometimes identify with the Fall of the House of Usher when I find that I have both literally and figuratively painted myself into a corner, having run out of energy, tired of finding that things just don’t work the way I thought they would and redoing them again and again. But anyone who has spent time renovating a house knows that houses are more than structures for living in; they are living things in themselves. They are full of memories, and a reflection of one’s personality. A reflection we may have never even noticed before.

    This book is a compilation of writings about specific episodes in this journey through the land of home repair, as well as a few reflective essays on the meaning behind all of this madness.