4. Home Repair and the Art of Being Grateful

Not being able to look for a house in Stillwater yet has forced us to turn our attention to our current home, to prepare for renting it out in the fall. My poor husband has been saddled with a “honey-do” list a mile long before his departure in a couple of weeks, as I have zero expertise in the area of home repair. (I did, however, manage to change the hard-to-get-to and extremely finicky halogen bulb in our microwave which illuminates the stove. I even used a Phillips screwdriver!) High priority items are to:

—patch the plaster in a couple of places, then sand and paint the bathroom;
—fix the busted pipe coming from the basement to the outside faucet;
—replace the back door knob and the front door lock;
—replace the entryway and dining room light fixtures;
—replace batteries on and mount the three smoke detectors;
—replace the expired fire extinguishers;
—fix the leaky kitchen faucet.

You are probably wondering how many of these things have been completed since we made the list a few weeks ago. I won’t hold you in suspense—none. That’s right. Two weeks left. I’ve been trying to practice deep breathing relaxation exercises, but I’m not sure they’re working, because I’m still pretty tense.

Why, you might ask, has it taken so long to get things done? Well, we’re just not so….efficient, it seems. Let me take the entryway light fixture as an example. First, we were going to schedule a trip to Ikea to buy a light fixture. Then, when we were at Lowe’s buying something for the bathroom project, I found a nice fixture that would work. So we scrapped the Ikea trip and postponed the bathroom project and he started working on the light. But our house was built in 1901, and the two places where there are actually ceiling lights in the house still have the old pipe coming down for a gas fixture. So the base of a modern light fixture won’t fit flush with the ceiling unless you figure out a way to replace screws and drill out a larger hole, etc. etc. And that is how an hour-long project turns into a four-hour-long project.

In other cases, we’ve just had pure bad luck. After the light fixture had been finally placed, my husband started pulling down the fixtures and cabinets in the bathroom to patch the plaster and paint. When I went upstairs a couple of hours later, the sink was disconnected and sitting in the middle of the room, the toilet was completely covered up, there was an enormous hole in the wall, and a fine layer of plaster dust over everything. My husband looked up sheepishly and said, “the sink was moving. I need to secure it, which meant I had to find the studs and put in something to brace it, which meant I had to dig a little bit.”

That was over a week ago.

A couple of days ago I had high hopes of being able to brush my teeth at the sink before going to bed. The bolts for the sink had been secured, the walls had been plastered and sanded, there was a fresh coat of a delightful daisy yellow on the walls. The only thing left was to hook up the sink to the water source and drain. We went to dinner at friends’ house and came home a few hours later to find little pieces of plastic all over the living room floor, and a guilty-looking dog. We’re not sure why she found the PVC pipe so delicious, but we knew we wouldn’t be brushing our teeth at the sink before another trip to the hardware store.

I’ve started to get triggered from hearing a stream of French (and sometimes English) expletives from some distant corner of the house. After fixing the broken pipe in the basement, my husband let loose another colorful string of cuss words; it seems that in fastening the pipe to the outside, it caused a leak further back. He gets his exercise these days by going up and down the stairs and out to the shop and back. He brings a tool bag everywhere he goes, but it seems it never has quite the exact tool he needs. I try to remain calm and sympathetic, and I keep making meals, doing laundry, keeping the dog entertained, and keeping the fire going in the wood stove. I make sure that the dog hasn’t suffered ill effects from chewing the drain pipe. I keep the teenager doing his homework and give him rides to see friends. I try not to complain about scraping the ice off our cars’ windshields even though we have a perfectly wonderful two-car garage, that is currently used as a staging area for all the things we’re trying to sell on Marketplace. I try not to complain that I can’t find my cosmetics or that the sink is sitting right in front of the toilet, or that the kitchen counters are constantly covered with stuff. I try to focus on being thankful that I have a husband who can fix things, and who does so willingly. I try to focus on enjoying the time we have together before he leaves.

Meanwhile, my car started leaking gas from the gas tank. This morning I felt a little like weeping as I saw the tow truck take it away. Our money reserves are draining away even faster than the gasoline leak, and we haven’t even started the move yet. BUT the sun is shining, the ice is slowly melting away, and I packed my first box for Stillwater. I must practice being grateful.