My husband and I bought our house 18 years ago and quite honestly, bought a shop with a house next to it, only thinking of my husband’s hobby of building street rods. It’s an 1,100 square foot house built in the 60’s. In our early marriage the size of the house was not a concern; it was just the two of us. Besides, these days who thinks they’ll be in their first home 18 years later?
As the years progressed we have updated or remodeled several things. These projects are always my idea. My husband has never taken a look around the house or the yard and decided something needed to be updated or replaced. If it were up to him the living room would only contain the two gold velour swivel rockers of his bachelorhood with the small, left-behind mosaic side table between them. The family room would still have the TV on a crate with the size of the TV increasing throughout the years. The burned log in the unused fireplace would still be intact; and the garden in the front yard would just be filled with what nature blew in.
Whenever I decide something needs to be updated, he has all sorts of reasons why something can’t be done or shouldn’t be done. But I didn’t become a home owner 18 years ago to sit on my home and let it get out of date and run down. Not surprisingly I usually win, or I just do it anyway. When I decide I have to move forward without him, I get it started and he usually comes around to make sure I do it “right” or to fix what I’ve demolished. The first thing I did when we moved in was poke a hole through the dining room wall to pull the phone cord through the other side. When he came home from work to see me grinning with the maniacal satisfaction you can only get from poking a hole in the wall, I’m sure he got some premonition of things to come.
Often he’ll agree to a remodel only to make me shudder inside when he declares to me he’ll do it himself. I begin to panic and start calling my small stock of inexpensive contractors and beg them to come home right away from Alaska or wherever they are, because my husband is about to tear a hole in the wall and install a new window himself. Then I throw myself in front of my husband like I’m trying to save a rainforest from destruction to keep him from doing damage that will cost extra to repair. We did a major remodel on our kitchen several years ago and he thought he was going to save money by installing the cabinets himself. I told him if he wanted to stay married we would have to hire someone. He did get to do the demolition of the old kitchen, which, by the way, he’s really good at. Then I let him install the handles on the cabinets… it took him three weeks.
The last update we did was really a punch in his gut. Not only did he not expect it, I hadn’t planned it. Oddly enough, one Friday night my husband and two girls and I were sitting in the family room together and the TV wasn’t even on. We had an innocent conversation about the state of the carpet and the next thing my husband knew we were at Home Depot buying flooring.
But I’m happy to say we’re still married and going strong. Maybe he figures I’ll run out of projects; it’s been 18 years and we’ve made it all the way through the house with our remodels and updates. But what he doesn’t understand is it’s been 18 years and things wear out. We may soon have to start over.
Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom committed to writing about the humor amidst the chaos of a family. You can read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com.
