Some projects we choose: painting a room, adding a deck, recessed lighting in the living room ceiling. We measure the spaces and watch YouTube videos of young people with tool belts and an extraordinary amount of drywalling skills for their age.
We travel up and down the aisles of Home Depot pushing a shopping cart large enough for a baby elephant. We throw in all the extras we didn’t consider and/or didn’t know existed. Special tapes and shockingly long nails. Nail guns. Four kinds of saws with 16 different kinds of blades. Deck paint. Wall paint. Brick paint. Supplies for stripping, tearing down, demolishing and everything to build it back up.
We don’t think of the projects as fun, really, but we know it will be worth it. An investment.
Other projects are gifted to us by thunderstorms and ice jams. We never heard the slow silent drip from the second floor bathroom; we never noticed the mold around the inside of the window. When the dog stood for three days by the fireplace trying to tell us about the bats, we ignored him. Now the project is urgent and expensive. It’s the middle of winter when no one wants to consider demolition and construction. The kitchen ceiling droops lower, new cracks every day.
We have been saving for a car, a vacation, college, retirement, but today we will have to write a check or take out a loan for the $12,000 new roof. We were going to surprise the kids next year with a trip to the Grand Canyon, but instead we will build fires and toast marshmallows in the new rodent-free fireplace.
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