Do not try this at home

I live in an old house and I love old houses. To my mind, they are better built, have more charm, and nearly always have more character. That character thing, however, can be a real double-edged sword. For example, I have these really cool diamond mullion windows in my house. They look great but are drafty as hell. Everyone that has an old house can share more than a few examples of their own.

And usually, the older the house, the more character. My house was built in 1918; my previous house 1908; the house I grew up in 1896. I have a pretty long history in this arena and have learned a couple of things about it. First, something odd happens to a place that has been lived in for a few generations. People will add their personal flavor to a place, some of which is permanent, and thankfully, most is not. Quirky bathrooms, weird kitchen designs, bizarre mixing of the old and new. Try to find a place to put a refrigerator in a kitchen that was designed before the icebox was invented. Second, no matter what, it is a HUGE pain in the ass to work in an old place. After decades of tinkering and natural settling, nothing is level and nothing is square.

So when L. and I decided that we needed to replace our nasty kitchen and adjoining bathroom floor, I was leaning towards having professionals do it. I hate laying floors. If you want to experience knee pain and serious frustration, put down a couple hundred tiles. When she found the black and white tiles we wanted in ceramic, I started calling for estimates. (BTW – it is nearly impossible to find plain jane black and white in peel and stick.) So we found a guy for a reasonable price who said it would take two days and I got my boss to let me work from home while the crew did their thing. And so the saga began.

I meet the guy (hereafter referred to as Mutt) at Home Depot to pick up the rest of the materials on Monday morning. His partner (AKA Jeff) was late – not a great start - so I got to help load everything into the van. Once back at the house, Mutt and I went over everything that needed to get done; which wires not to cut, which doors needed be trimmed to accommodate the rise in the floor, etc. Scope discussions concluded I headed upstairs to the sound of demolition in my kitchen. By the time the crew was packing up Monday evening, my house was covered in dust, every room downstairs had been cluttered up with cooking items, and the phone line that I specifically said not to cut (you guessed it) had been severed at the baseboard. Adding insult to injury, it rained all day so clay dust from tile cutting started to form rock-like mud deposits which were tracked all over the first floor. I was furious. I channeled my inner Homer Simpson and began thinking to myself ‘Urge to kill rising’. I salved my anger with beer. L. thought I was going to have an aneurism.

Tuesday arrived and I had calmed down a bit and was actually pretty stoked. Mutt and Jeff would have the floor finished and they would be out of my house. Oh happy day! I am smoking a cigarette outside when Mutt pulls into my driveway. Before he even gets out of the van, he informs me that the kitchen phone doesn’t work anymore. No shit. He said they had to cut it to get the tile down. I don’t understand why this is true but whatever. Urge to kill rising. Mutt then tells me they need more floor mud and I need to go back to Home Depot to get more. Urge to kill rising. I drive twenty minutes to the mud, twenty minutes back, give them the bag, and get to work. Most of the day passed uneventfully until they are ready to knock off for the day. Mutt informed me that they could not raise the pedestal sink and I would need a plumber. Great news! Plumbers are notorious for overcharging on small jobs like this. When you make $75 an hour, why waste an hour of drive time for a $150 job when you could just as easily take a $1000 one. In the construction biz, more so than almost any other, time is money. Urge to kill rising. But Mutt had even more good tidings. He could only cut three of the four doors and we needed custom thresholds. Because of the difference in height between the tiles and the subfloor, no common threshold would bridge the gap; the fourth door has a rather old and complicated swing mechanism and he balked at trying to reinstall it. We now needed a carpenter. His final bit of news; they needed another day to finish. Awesome! Another day of chaos, here I come. Urge to kill rising.

Today, Mutt and Jeff arrived and informed me that they underestimated the amount of grout, baseboard, and shoe molding they need. Mutt says I need to go back to Home Depot. Urge to kill rising. I go get the stuff, come back home, and get to work.

This afternoon, they finally finished. The floor looks great. The baseboard and shoe molding are fitted well. Mutt and Jeff collected their check and are gone from my life forever. After they leave, I went outside to smoke and on my front porch I found the brand new unopened bag of grout I bought this morning. Urge to kill rising. L. has not seen it yet but I am sure she is going to be ecstatic, and really, that is the most important thing.

I offer this story as a cautionary tale to those of you considering similar activities. Home improvement is ALWAYS more expensive and irritating that you think it will be. And while I now have a beautiful floor, I need a plumber, carpenter, and electrician to get my kitchen and bathroom back to full working order. So my advice to anyone thinking of doing a job around the house: before you go down that road, consider moving first. It may just be easier on your wallet and your mental state.