Home improvement moratorium

By RICK RYCKELEY
Contributing Writer

That’s right, I’ve finally succumbed to a state of weary acceptance. There will be no more home improvement projects at our house.

The Wife has had her fill and put her little foot down. Me and my tools are underneath it. She has declared that there will be a one-year home improvement moratorium - even when we move into our new house in six weeks. It’s not fair, just not fair at all. I was born to do home improvements. I got the genes.

The very first time the cookie jar broke and I had to glue all the pieces back together before Mom got home so she wouldn’t find out, I knew. When us four boys built our first go-cart out of old skates nailed to the bottom of boards with a stick for a break, I knew. And even when Goofy Steve took the Flamingo Street Flyer on its maiden, downhill run and crashed into Old Mrs. Crabtree’s mailbox, destroying both, I knew. I knew I could fix anything and home improvement projects would be my life.

After one look at our wrecked Flyer, I turned to my brothers and proudly stated, “I can fix that.” At that moment in my life I knew I had inherited Dad’s “fix-it” genes. It took just two days for me to fix the Flyer, and only one trip under the weight of Bubba Hanks to bend the frame, flatten the front wheels and wear the stick break down to a nub. But no matter — another home improvement junkie was born. I never would have guessed that my passion for fix-it projects would lead to a moratorium for an entire year.

The Wife reminded me as she helped me pick up all of my tools and lock them in the shed, “To have and to hold ‘til death do we part,” were the vows we took. Nowhere did it say anything about putting up with home improvement projects. That’s when I reminded her about the “better or worse” part. The Wife was not amused. But home improvement projects gone awry are really not my fault. For example: the mishap with our hall bathroom.

All I really wanted to do was switch out the faucet in the hall bathroom. The men folk out there would agree — it’s a simple enough task. One which should take about ten minutes — should take. Told the Wife what I was gonna do; she smiled and said she was going to take a nap - not to make too much noise. She had lived through years of home improvement projects, what was one more? Good, I thought, by the time she wakes up, we will have a new faucet. Boy, was I ever wrong.

The Wife found me sitting in the hall with sweat pouring down my face, still holding the old sink faucet when she came around the corner. She started to say something about being rustled from her nap early by all of the banging, but stopped mid-sentence when she saw the mess. Around me lay the old sink, two water lines, all of the stuff we stuffed in the cabinet under the sink, the old sink cabinet, broken pieces of the bathroom mirror, a broken toilet, and the linoleum which moments before was on the bathroom floor.

Before she could say a word, I explained that the water lines didn’t have cutoffs, the faucet was rusted onto the metal sink, the cabinet broke when I tried to pull the sink out, and the mirror shattered when I used the sledge hammer to remove the cabinet. (I learned early on in my home improvement training that if it doesn’t fit or you can’t get it out, just use a bigger hammer. The 10-pound sledgehammer I borrowed from Best Friend Mitch last year did quite a nice job on our hall bathroom.)

I ended the conversation by proudly informing The Wife that the water would only be cut off in the entire house for two days or so. I wanted to retile the bathroom, since everything was already torn out. That’s when she informed me about the one-year moratorium on home improvement projects, especially those that take, “only ten minutes.”      

One year. A long time not to try and fix things inside the house — but I think I can make it. Besides, in about six weeks we’ll have a new house. With a huge backyard - there’s no telling what kind of stuff will need fixing outside.