But vilifying older people? Are we supposed to apologize for living longer? For being healthier? Are we supposed to stop being upwardly mobile and shuffle into some squalid flat? Screw that.
In the meantime, guilt stalks The Husband and me. When yet another delivery truck idles in front of our house, its high-pitched safety alarms alerting the neighbourhood, we cringe. When smart-dressed salesmen toting showroom sample cases show up at our house, we hustle them inside before they have time to knock on the door.
Renovation guilt is new to me, and it is hard not to take a defensive attitude. Neither The Husband nor I came to home ownership easily: we both worked from a young age and saved for a down payment. If we were now able to afford a crappy house in a poor neighbourhood—and bear in mind we have paid £300,000 plus for the privilege—then why should we not be allowed to fix it up to our comfort? Were we supposed to live with dodgy electrical wiring? Inconvenient plumbing? With kitchen appliances that are old and possibly unsafe? It is not like we are digging out the basement and installing a cinema or swimming pool and gilding the window frames in gold leaf. I know I am part of a privileged class, but we have reached the point in our social history where the word privileged does not mean someone with a racing yacht or a Lamborghini; it simply means someone who can afford a home. I find that both humbling and frightening.
Despite Easton being considered a “deprived area” of Bristol, there are ample signs of change in the air. Every street, including ours, has at least one house encased in scaffolding for loft conversions, and there are skips outside dozens of homes as interior renovations are undertaken. Everyone is either renovating or capitalizing on the overheated housing market and selling up. But every neighbourhood with a social conscience should also make provisions for those unable to afford a home. There should be attractive affordable housing for people, and if not, then there should be more opportunities to help people get on the property ladder: schemes such as offering people of lesser means the chance to purchase derelict properties, with the proviso of additional grants or funds to enable them to renovate them in exchange for some sweat equity. It would be a step toward getting rid of areas of squalor and, more important, giving people pride of ownership.
Gentrification should not be looked upon as a crime; it is the bellwether of prosperity and aspiration. If a nation or a neighbourhood does not aspire to something higher than itself—whether materially or spiritually—then the economy flat-lines and takes everyone with it. If you are poor and your attitude is “Well, so what; let’s all be poor,” you do humanity a huge disservice by dousing ambition and advocating a cheerless baseline. A level playing field does not make everyone happy and leaves everyone miserable. Frankly, I do not want to be around lazy, unambitious people. There is nothing evil in trying to be better, in trying to do better. If Ali’s landlord sees an opportunity to sell her house and turn a profit, then good on her. It frees up another house; gives someone else a toehold on the property ladder, someone who can begin to experience stability, reap equity.
Gosh, I sound like a proper Forsyte.
18
The Tea Station
When you hear of the British fondness for tea, it sounds like a charming, quaint cliché, until you actually live in England and witness the addiction—I mean, the affection—for tea. Everything stops for tea. Absolutely everything. You cannot go fifty feet in this country without encountering a café, and if you are undertaking renovations on your home, there is a tacit understanding that you will provide a tea station for your workers. No loos, thank you; just a tea station.
In North America, tradesmen show up with a Thermos, or nip out to Tim Horton’s for their fix, but in Britain, workers expect tea to run like a continuous morphine drip.
It drives me crazy, and I refuse to be a party to it. I have enough on my mind what with the manual labour and stressing about the renovation costs.
The Husband stresses about the renovation costs, too, but being English he knows the crucial importance of tea in his homeland. He duly sets up a tea station and makes sure that we are completely equipped for service.
If the national grid does a forensic examination of our energy consumption during this period, it will reveal that our kettle is on virtually continuous boil. Grow-ops use less energy. It is one of the things that gets my goat about Britain, this apparently constant need for tea, especially among those in the building trades. I suppose that since we are on-site and therefore available to facilitate this tradition, the blame is ours. I know it is a gesture of hospitality, and indeed I greet each worker each morning with a steaming mug of java, but it is the covert expectation of follow-up injections of caffeine that brings my patience to a boil. If I hear one more time the phrase “This is thirsty work”—the backhanded cue for you to offer the person tea—I will scream. I do not begrudge workers who want to make a tea or coffee for themselves—the tea station has been set up for that purpose so they can perform their rituals whenever they want—but tea delivered every hour or so?
The Husband, however, is the kindest of men. He is a person of courtly hospitality, and this bugs me only because I am not. He is forever asking Francis and anyone who happens to walk through our door whether they want tea, or a top-up. I try to explain to him that we have no running water, no toilet; that our electrical system is but a rudimentary bar of sockets rigged up by Mark, the electrician. It does not deter him. I say that we have enough to do at the house without our time being sucked up by making tea. He ignores me and goes about his duties. I half expect him to don a pinny and a cap and wheel a small trolley from tradesman to tradesman. When he asks me “Would you like a tea?” a bite of irritation accompanies my answer: “No, thanks. I am perfectly capable of getting through an entire day without one.” Unlike your countrymen, my inner voice adds.
As the renovation progresses, I soften when the bigger picture looms into focus: The Husband has never strapped on a tool belt, never attempted a DIY project. He possesses no skill or aptitude for any trade, nor does he possess an inclination or desire to learn. He refuses to make a single decision about any aspect of a renovation. And that, I have surmised, is not due to truculence but to fear: he is fearful of making a mistake.
Whereas I will gamely blunder in with a stupid amount of confidence and the barest of knowledge to tackle a situation regardless of how foolish I might appear, The Husband is fully cognizant of his abilities and does not need to worry about looking foolish. What he can do, what he is good at and comfortable doing, is making tea, and that is the role he has created for himself.
Having sussed out his area of expertise, he takes on the task with diligence and proprietary attention: he is tea maker to the trades. He does make a lovely cuppa. Susie, an American friend, insists that The Husband makes the best cup of tea anywhere. As burly men stomp around in their steel-toed boots, thumbs hooked in the loops of tool belts slung low on their hips like cowboy holsters, The Husband—trim, genteel, always well groomed—clasps his hands and asks, “Would you like a cup of tea? A biscuit, perhaps?”
So far, we have gone through a giant box of tea bags, two big jars of instant coffee, and innumerable packages of chocolate digestives. When Francis arrived one morning with a jar of his own coffee, The Husband went to the shops to find the same brand, and now makes certain that it is always available at our house. He is that attentive a host. When we were courting and I would visit him in London, he always made sure my favourite foods were in the fridge and that there was peony-scented soap in the bathroom, remembering how much I love peonies.
While I have come around to The Husband’s tea-making proclivities, and find them endearing, I am getting frustrated by his lack of heavy lifting. When lorries arrive and unload supplies, he always seems to be in the middle of making tea, so it falls to me to deal with delivery drivers, to help move the goods into our front garden, and to carry them into the house. Granted, I know this renovation territory—I have done this countless of times: I wear construction dust
like a second skin. But I am feeling like the guy in our relationship, and that does not please me. I worry that the neighbours might think I am a bit butch, and who would blame them? My legs show muscular definition; my gait has turned from its usual bounce to a slight swagger; I have begun to check my jawline in the mirror for signs of five o’clock shadow.
Perhaps it is time to sit down and chill. Perhaps I need a cup of tea.
19
The Worrier-in-Chief
We begin to unravel, but damned if I can work out which of us is in worse condition. I have no sense of what psychosis is brewing in The Husband’s head, but if it has any resemblance to what is going on in mine, it might very well need to be flushed through with a strong course of shock therapy.
My head currently exists in three different but parallel universes, careening from extended-version memories of my past homes, to thinking about this current one, to pretending that I am part of a reality TV version of a renovation project. If these three strands should overlap, they risk causing the sort of end-of-days disaster that figures in Star Wars when the beams from the lightsabres inadvertently cross. I most definitely do not feel like a Jedi knight, and the only Force that surrounds me is the one draining our bank account.
These strands must be harnessed before they collide and do me in, but they cannot be completely eliminated: all of them are competing for time right now, and I must respect their process. Memories and imagination have needs, too, and require an opportunity for healthy venting.
To manage them, I assign to each a specific time of the day or the undertaking of a specific task where they can go off leash. For instance, when I clear rubble or engage in an activity that requires cleaning, I give my mind over to revisiting past renovations and homes. When we are in the car driving back to our rental home at the end of the day I focus on this new home, on what has been accomplished during the day, what needs my attention for work to proceed tomorrow, and what needs to be ordered for the work ahead of that. It is all on copious notes stuffed into various labelled-by-room file slots of a red-leather portfolio I carry around. It sounds very organized, but in fact my most crucial notes are contained in a single notebook, while the file slots hold the easy stuff: paint and fabric swatches, along with rough pencil sketches of what each room is to look like when it is finished. If it ever gets finished.
The third strand, of pretending I am participating in a reality TV renovation, is saved for brief moments of downtime when I am at the house, wandering from room to room and talking to myself or explaining my grand plans to an imaginary camera. I must admit, my on-camera commentary is impressive. Once you set aside the wild, dust-streaked hair and the wardrobe that looks like it was fished from the bottom of a dumpster, my delivery has a calm, decisive assurance. I can smoothly articulate the methodical progress of what has been done and what needs to be done, and I can wax lyrical about the products and the design aesthetic I have chosen, but as soon as the metaphorical camera is turned off, chaotic reality rushes back in, and I am as articulate as Porky Pig: “Abedi, abedi, abedi, that’s all folks!”
It is getting to me, this renovation. I feel swamped by its magnitude, and the way it incrementally diminishes the control I have of it. Or was that a fantasy?
Francis has the role of project manager, but my confidence in him is waning. He has made a couple of sloppy and costly blunders. The Velux skylights planned for the far end of the kitchen—the ones that were supposed to give the room the wow factor—have arrived, but they do not fit. Francis erred on his measurements. Norm from This Old House would not be impressed. Getting them to fit will mean taking the roof apart and reconstructing it at a cost of £15,000. No, thanks. Just plasterboard and paint the ceiling, I say. And since it was his mistake, I tell him he will have to swallow the cost of the Veluxes. (A few weeks later, he will try to sneak in an extra £4,000 on an invoice he sends me. When I catch this, he will be over-apologetic and blame his calculator.)
He has not made a move on the bathroom or indicated a schedule or time frame. With jocular confidence he says our house will be ready in plenty of time for our move-in date, which is five weeks away. I have already given notice to the landlord back at our Little Britain rental.
“All that’s left is to plaster the kitchen, which will be done tomorrow, and then Pedro, the tiler, arrives Thursday to do the floor. After that it’s a matter of installing the kitchen cabinets, which are being delivered today, and painting. You still want white, right?”
Yes, I say. White walls. White is the default choice of the undecided, but after the darkness in our Brixham house I want this home to be bright, and you do not get brighter than white.
“And the bathroom?” I ask.
“It’ll get done,” he says. “Paul [the plumber] is super busy right now and his wife’s expecting, so we just have to wait till he’s available. But after Pedro does the kitchen floor, I’ll get him to do the bathroom tiles.”
I move outside to take a call from Mark, the electrician. He has rewired the upstairs and roughed in the main floor. He is waiting for Francis to get the plasterer in to do his work so that the electrics can be finished. I can tell he is getting impatient.
The next day Mark drops by in the hope that a renovation fairy has flown in and magically done the plastering.
We still have not heard from the gas company about moving the gas panel, or from the energy utility about moving the electrical panel. Mark “knows a guy” who can move the electrical panel for half the cost of what the utility supplier will charge us. But The Husband, who reads the fine print on everything, who requires written and signed guarantees on company letterhead, and whose personal code does not stretch to anything that is done under the table, goes pale.
“We would save £400, not to mention time,” I reason.
“And if we get caught, we could face a fine,” he snaps.
“The last guy who used my mate was the chief of police,” Mark pipes in.
That does not convince The Husband, and I am inclined to agree with him. We are the type of people who would get caught and bear the consequences.
“I will keep calling the utility and see if we can get a date,” I say.
I make a note to call them as soon as I . . . what? My mind suddenly goes blank. I know there is someone else to call or to get after, or something to order. I look around. The place is strewn with bathroom fixtures, and kitchen appliances, packages of tiles stacked against every available wall along with lengths of pipe and wires, and tool bags. And dust. There is so much dust. It looks like Kabul after a bomb blast.
I consult my long, scribbled to-do list. The floor refinishers. And the kitchen worktops. Those are things I need to organize.
I check on The Husband. He has returned to his makeshift tea station, kettle on the boil, two coffees ready to go.
“Let me help,” I say. “I will take this to Mark . . .”
“No, not that one, this one. Milk, no sugar. That other one is for Francis.”
The Husband has assigned specific mugs to specific people. For instance, the blue mug is Francis’s, always Francis’s. The mug with the orange handle is Mark’s. Anyone who is on the premises for longer than a day is assigned a mug by The Husband. This saves him from washing the mugs during the day, because, as you may recall, we still do not have running water. He has memorized everyone’s coffee and tea preferences. In fact, he knows the trades first by their order—“one milk, no sugar” or “double sugar, one milk”—and second by their names.
I take the mug and, glancing up at his face, I notice how drawn he looks. He has not been sleeping well. In our rental home, he tosses angrily in bed, and then gets up in the middle of the night, wrenching his dressing gown from the hook on the back of the bedroom door and padding downstairs to flick on the kettle. The renovation has worried him beyond rationality. His dreams are likely populated with images of himself crawling on his belly through a storm of plaster dust, scrambling over rubble, falling down a shaft an
d emerging from it, catatonic with fear, only to be met with thugs who declare him bankrupt and destitute, and who turn him over to a maniacally laughing builder who threatens to put his balls in a claw-like vice.
Despite Francis being the picture of sunny optimism and assertions of “This is going better than expected” or “No problems at all. It’s really straightforward,” none of this is balm to The Husband’s anxiety. And yet, he hides it well. When he talks with the trades or with people on the street, he is the picture of cheerfulness and easygoingness, a veritable Mr. Pleasant, but out of sight and with me he is the love child of Mr. Grumpy and Ms. Worry, and godson of Mr. Grumble.
Lately, he has fixated on house insurance and door locks, and has appointed himself security officer. He asks—as if I am supposed to know—whether the newly installed French doors in the second reception room have a locking mechanism that conforms to the rigorous code the insurers demand.
Open House Page 19
