DIY Victim
February 4th, 2010
WHERE ARE YOU?
This is what I’ve been hearing from everyone in my life right now. WHERE ARE YOU? You act like you’re on an island or something.
Well, why yes I am. I am on an island. Trapped under a box of french crullers. Lord help me.
Actually, I’ve been preoccupied with that house of mine. Not the one on Vashon but the one that I own in West Seattle. You know the one that was supposed to be a good investment (buy high! sell higher!). The one that is slated to pay for Paige’s college. And my trip around the world. The one that practically imploded last summer with the leak to end all leaks. THAT ONE.
Well that house is still getting fixed up. STILL.
Let’s harken back to when I was a young naive home remodeler with nothing but big dreams and 40 episodes of Flip That House & Extreme House Makeover under my belt. My motto being, “If they can do that in 1 month with $15,000 think what I can do with 3 months and $50,000!”
Oh the naivety.
It’s been going so slow. And we’ve run into so many problems. Just think about all of the remodeling stories you’ve heard in your lifetime. Everyone has a remodeling battle story. Like the neighbor who redid their kitchen … their eyes start to go vacant as they recall with great accuracy that in the end it cost them 47.5% more than they had anticipated. They were unwilling to give up the honed marble because it came from the same quarry that Michaelangelo’s David was carved from. MICHAEL-FUCKING-ANGELO. So now they have honed Italian marble countertops sitting proudly on their IKEA cabinets.
That’s how things are going. Except, I don’t have the budget for marble. I am just trying to figure out how I can afford to replace the toilet.
And that is the bitter truth of the home remodel. You open up walls and you find things like there’s no insulation or more leaks. And just when you can’t think of anything worse than vinyl siding, you realize that there is something infinitely worse. ASBESTOS. Or the subfloor is warping and needs to be replaced. So you have to make choices like, what do I shave from this very very very slim budget?
AND if you are really delusional like I am, you start to think that you can do things tile and grout (I saw them do it on Trading Spaces!) or mess with electrical wiring. Brahahahah!! In my case, I am feeling fearless and have decided to remove the asbestos shingles from my house because I couldn’t bear cutting $4,000 from the budget.
*Sigh*
Suffice to say, those hazmat suits make my butt look big(ger).
No french crullers necessary.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
stella Says:
