Special:
Home Edition
Renovation Dreams and Homeownver Heartache
Extreme Makeover
Home
Edition:
Extreme
Makeover
A Cautionary Tale
by Bennett Law
If
you think of life as a succession of reality television shows, Tom and
I have moved well past "Manhunt" and "Boy Meets Boy"
and find ourselves mired in the muck and humiliation of "Extreme
Makeover: Home Edition."
Many years ago (and I'm not kidding)
I decided that I wanted to renovate our dining room. The floors were uneven
and many of the floor boards had split, the windows wouldn't open, none
of the electrical outlets worked, and there was only one lonely wall sconce
providing light. The wallpaper (the portions that one cat or another hadn't
clawed off the walls) had long since been painted and re-painted, and
the wood trim was discolored and damaged. This room – and I –
were crying out for help.
Tom and I hired an architect without
interviewing others. He's wildly talented, wildly sexy, and wildly expensive.
What’s not to like? He is a doting father, and brings his towheaded
young son with him to client meetings. Honestly, the only man-magnet our
architect is missing is a puppy.
We were more methodical in hiring our builder.
Our architect secured bids from five contractors, and we chose three for
me to interview. Tom was still working in Southern Vermont then (this
was years ago, remember), so – out of expediency – I was deemed
sufficiently competent to hire a builder on my own.
My criterion was actually very simple: I
was determined not to hire anyone that I might be tempted to sleep with,
or that I guessed Tom might be tempted by. It had already come up that
I fail to keep my hands off the architect (did I mention wildly sexy?),
and I figured life would be like a '70s porn video if I was panting after
our builder all day long.
One of the finalists was eliminated for
exactly this reason. He had flawless skin, eyelashes like butterfly wings,
honey-colored hair, and a soft, quiet voice that forced you to lean ever
closer to him as he spoke. I was seated beside him reviewing the portfolio
he had brought, rapturously listening to him recount his contributions
to each project, and all at once I stopped listening and simply watched
his beautiful mouth form words.
As I sat mesmerized by his lips and the
intermittent sweeping of his lush lashes over his deep brown eyes, I became
obsessed with the notion that I was close enough to simply turn my head
and lick him. I wanted to know what he tasted like. I was guessing it
would be good.
He didn't get hired. The man I did hire
was passionate about our project, came highly recommended by our architect,
and had established the level of his craft as a violinmaker. And I was
absolutely sure I could keep my hands off him.
Our builder got started on December 15th
of 2002. And here's the cautionary part of this tale: he's still here.
Yes, our dining room has been torn up – though it feels more accurate
to say our house has been torn up – for three Christmases in a row.
And we don't even have floors yet (or a heating system – the builder
ripped it out – or electricity in half the house).
What we do have are a new foundation, new
sills, and all new beams supporting the east side of our house. The front
of the house no longer bows slightly, and the room is square (which involved
both lowering the floors and cheating into the ceiling).
We have invested more than two full years
of our lives in improvements to our house that no one will ever see. And
to top this all off, Tom and I must qualify for some kind of award (federal
disaster relief?) for spending more on the renovation of a single room
– nowhere near complete – than I spent to purchase the entire
property in the first place. This builder has brought us pain and aggravation
that seems unimaginable from a man neither of us is sleeping with!
In the years our builder has dallied around
perfecting the subsystems of a single room, four people on our street
have built complete houses – start to finish. Tom and I have tried
to sustain a sense of humor through all this. We have found that the secret
to avoiding the damage to a relationship that often accompanies financial
disaster is to focus on your common enemy. And in this we have good company:
our builder has become public enemy number one in our neighborhood. Tom
and I sometimes worry that we'll have to protect him from a horde of our
caring neighbors arriving with pitchforks to run him off the property
for good!
Perhaps life is that succession of reality
shows. Our architect and builder have been locked in a fierce game of
"Survivor" – each one determined that the other be voted
off this island. Refereeing their battles left us feeling like "Nanny
911." So in mid-January Tom and I finally went all Donald Trump on
the guy and told the builder, "You're fired!" He may be out
of a job but, in the end, Tom and I are clearly "The Biggest Losers."
Bennett Law and Tom Bivens camp out in the shell of their home in
Bethel.