By Rebecca Kilby
Special to The Citizen

Sometimes in the middle of home renovations you just can’t take it anymore – the mess, the constant work, and the setbacks.

And trust me there are always setbacks.

We had made a lot of progress on a project in our basement when a lovely Georgia summer rain (i.e. torrential downpour) resulted in a bit of water damage. My dear husband, Kevin, looked so burnt out. He had been working so hard and here was just one more thing to contend with.

Faced with his defeatist comments, I decided some home renovation intervention was needed and told him to hop in the truck. Step one consisted of picking up some ice cream, which usually does the trick, but that obviously wasn’t going to cut it this time.

Onto intervention step number two: when things get frustrating there is always the magic of house hunting.

You see we love driving around and looking at the houses in our neighborhood. There is everything from grand old Victorians and wonderfully restored craftsman bungalows, to homes with great bones and a need for a little TLC (a dangerous temptation for a HGTV junkie with just enough knowledge to be dangerous). My rationale was that we could drool over the wonderfully restored homes in our neighborhood and get some much-needed motivation. The other possibility was that we would stumble upon a fabulously restored home going for a rock bottom price that was move in ready. Feel free to point and laugh at me.

We cruised by our favorite fixer-uppers and dream homes and then worked our way around some areas we had never explored. Each “for sale” flyer we looked at led to repeated comparisons to our own home by my husband. There was a downside to every one of them; other homes had smaller yards, less bedrooms, needed extensive work done on them, or had a price tag that seemed ridiculous to us. Our house, a source of frustration and endless work, was stacking up pretty well against other homes out there.
After about an hour or so of driving around and stuffing ourselves with ice cream we headed back home.

As we drove up, we looked at our little bungalow with the new porch railing Kevin had built, the yard he had landscaped, and the porch chairs I had painted and recovered. It was then that the original potential we saw in our own home came back to us; and it was now time for us to head back to work.

After returning home, we decided that there was only one thing we could do at that moment – find a new project to get us back on track.

Sounds crazy right? Why would we take on yet another task?

The key to the new project was that it needed to be completed easily in under a day and with minimal stress involved. Finishing something, anything, can prevent you from abandoning all projects and moving into a tent in your back yard. My hubby decided to fix our tragic, tottering, discount mailbox.

You know the neighbor with the mailbox that sways in the wind? The one you drive by wondering why the owners didn’t just pony up for something more than a tin can perched on a stick? We are that neighbor, much to my chagrin.

So, Kevin went to work. He used a partial brick support column left in our basement, attached a wooden base and post, and added on the freshly spray painted mailbox. Of course I painted the mailbox, as painting is usually my job. You see, there are times when you must admit your weaknesses – at least that is what I keep telling my husband. His kryptonite? Painting. I know he hates to paint so I rarely ask him to, especially since he is annoyingly skilled in pretty much everything else renovation related.

I only asked him to help once. It was when we were painting our dining room a lovely shade of red. Why this exception? Well, because it took six. seemingly never ending coats. We listened to the clerk’s assurance that we didn’t need a tinted primer and paid the price for it.

Unfortunately, Kevin agreed to help, which led to paint runs that needed to be sanded and uneven trim lines that needed to be redone (by me of course). I often wondered if he really was that bad of a painter or, if like a petulant child, he figured that if he did a bad enough job I would never ask him to help again.

Yet there he was, out in the front yard and painting the brick column with the same paint color used on the exterior of the house so it would “coordinate.” The project had to get finished, and finished by sunset, if it was to truly lift his spirits. If that meant painting, he was on it. I saw a few spots that I would need to fix the next day, but he seemed to have improved his painting skills remarkably.

As he finished painting, he lugged the five gallon jug away and laughingly mentioned that this won’t get me off the hook when it comes time to paint the siding on our house.
Mission accomplished - we are back on track.

login to post comments