My husband has many talents. He never should have let his abilities out for me to observe because I know what he can do and I love seeing the finished products. He can't figure out why I dream out loud, as if he's made of money. I know he's not, but I do know he's loaded with skills untried in many areas, and I feel responsible for helping him try his wings in every area. I'm a good helper that way.
Don can do electrical work and plumbing, frame walls, build shelves (built-in), install appliances, and today he began installing a "click" wood floor in an upstairs bedroom ... for practice in order to handle later projects.
I know he feels incompetent when he hits a wall -- both literally and figuratively, and I know that our version of "This Old House" frustrates him. He wonders when we'll live in "This New House" so he won't have any of this aggravation. Yet, knowing what I know about people who have built/bought those lovely finished products, I know that they're never finished, no more than we ever will be in our stone foundation of more than 150 years. What's on top of that foundation will change with the times and with our desires for improvement. Carpet will come up for wood floors. Wainscoting will cover walls or ceilings and new fixtures will adorn bathrooms and kitchens. None of this happens all at once, of course. It's the "down time" in between that wreaks havoc on Don, I think!
Watching Don work on this floor project, I see his need to get the job done quickly and correctly -- he has a desire to get it all done in "X" number of simple steps and when he can't ... which is the majority of the time, he likes to place blame on lack of level or plumb work surfaces (which no new home has, either, and no home will have after it has settled a while). I know that any of these projects will always have these speed bumps and hassles incorporated somewhere. He has an almost idealistic plan for success, though tempered with the pessimistic outlook that "this will be a huge project in this house." This is true in any house, it's just that we haven't lived everywhere else to experience the phenomenon.
We humans never have it our way. We want to pave, shingle, drywall and paint our way into a restful, peaceful existence, only to run into high labor costs, rising prices on products we need, and the ever-growing list of home repairs that inevitably occur with any home older than five years. We will never feel happy with the walls that surround us because, as people, we can't create anything perfect, nor can we understand what perfection really is -- our selfish desires get in the way of our real needs, and when we find ourselves confronted with someone else's concept of "DIY", we set out to correct it. Some people even attempt to adjust God's Creation to suit their desires -- digging ponds, moving hillsides -- rearranging the landscape to better suit their own personal view of "perfect".
If we built a home with our own hands would we act differently? A few years of our habitation inside those walls and something would require adjustment, at least in our estimation. The inevitability of an appliance going bad or a corner of a wall cracking settles it for us. Our "need" to improve, change, remodel and realign our surroundings makes for countless Do It Yourself projects.
At the end of Don's hours of labor, I always feel ecstatic. We've had new plumbing in one house, allowing water to run clean and clear everywhere it should. We've had new wiring that also incorporated phone and cable lines to every floor and room of our first home, lighting and energizing areas that had never seen activity like that before. We've enjoyed a renovated 3rd floor space that acted as play room and office because we had the space and Don had the skills. I do the finish work as long as he does the initial job.
We work well together, just not at the same time. Neither of us likes to ask for help -- nothing to do with pride or mistrust, but more to do with the fact that neither of us delegate well. We tend to do our own work no matter how long it takes and no matter how many willing hands might offer to assist. When someone helps us we tend to oversee the help rather than work alongside. Having young children makes us better at delegating, and the kids want to work right along with us, we just find it difficult to get the job done at an even slower pace!
In all our years of work around the house, we've experienced fixes of all sizes. Some because of need, many because of want. I doubt that will ever end but if we pace ourselves and make projects of things that really matter, we should find those grueling hours paying off and the "Home Sweet Home" sign more meaningful than ever.
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