House Wrecking?
© Mari Brodersen
The home wrecking began when my husband and I decided it was well past time to have certain structural repairs made to our home, as well as getting rid of the dry rot on our exterior window frames and patching up some funny looking places on the walls and ceilings.
One of my husband's employees is married to an independent contractor, and - I still don't know why - my husband chose to hire him. The first day, the day after Thanksgiving, Mr. Contractor came over with his two sons. They went to work in every room of the house. Why they couldn't work in one room until it was finished before moving on to the next, is far beyond my comprehension. After they left, the furnishings and belongings in each room were piled in the center of that room and liberally coated with plaster dust. The rooms would remain in this state of dusty disarray for weeks, and even months, while we waited for the repairmen to finish a room!
As the weeks slowly dragged by, the contractor and his sons began to show up hours later than they had said they would, or not at all. The work was still underway in all the rooms. The carpet, stained with mud and paint from the repairmen's boots, attested to the repairmen's actvities as did the plaster "splats" on our newly refinished saltillo tile.
I had an idea, and remembered that - early in our marriage - Ron had wished he could find one complete book of home repairs. At the time, we had been able to find specialized books about plumbing, books about wood repairs, books about tile repairs, and so on. One day, at "Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse" (one of Ron's favorite stores since he started wood working a few years ago),I found a delightful Lowe's publication entitled Complete Home Improvement and Repair.
Buying that book brought me down to earth a little. Living simply is partially about doing things in the simplest and most careful (even loving) way possible (Stickley furniture comes to mind as an example of this). The contractor and his sons were not really making our lives simpler. Nor were they able to work with the care that our home deserves.
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