You know what I hate? My dining room. It’s a box, and it’s a stupid size. What kind of mouth-breather designs a room that’s 12’x12’5”? Ridiculous. Stupid not-quite-a-square room. I hate it.
You know what else I hate? My stupid staircase. I mean, first there was the whole thing where my 165lb Younger Son fell through it…
Hm, I should probably explain that.
So a while back (I won’t specify, because it’d be a little embarrassing) my YS was loping up the stairs. He’s about 6’3” and so his walking, or running, looks more like loping. Anyway, he was loping up the stairs. They’ve always creaked under any amount of weight, but had recently gotten worse. So, he’s loping up the stairs and about halfway up, two steps collapse. The ceiling of the staircase below stopped his fall. He wasn’t injured.
So my good friend A came over. We removed the sheet rock from the ceiling below and he started chuckling. A bemused and professionally insulted kind of chuckle. Like when someone sends me a “TV ready” graphic in CMYK color space, with the characters not outlined. I mean come on. Ridiculous. Amateur.
Apparently my staircase had no stringer. The only thing holding it up, for 49 years, were two nails on each end of every step. I chuckled, bemused and professionally insulted for my friend A. He’d brought tools and was able to fashion a stringer and various supports, carefully explaining that these were temporary fixes.
So right before a virus sent us all scurrying indoors, She and I had decided we were going to pursue a home renovation. The flooring guy was here giving me some quotes and I asked him if they do stairs. He said that sometimes they did. So I showed him the underside of my staircase. He scratched his head, laughed in a bemused and professionally insulted tone and said, “Lord no, that’s a hot mess you don’t want me anywhere near. You need a master carpenter.”
Awesome. I hate my staircase.
You know what else I hate? My electrical panel. No, that’s inaccurate. I hate my home’s electrical everything. I once had a breaker blow, and the outlet I’d plugged my air compressor into (in the garage) wasn’t the only thing that went. That one breaker shut off the outlets in my office, ONE of the outlets in the guest room, the main floor bathroom, and the outlet on the porch. It’s also, along with about three-quarters of the breakers, unlabeled.
I’m pretty sure my house was built in one weekend by a bunch of high school students whose boss drew the plans in sidewalk chalk.
But you know, spending this much time in this building has made clear what my priorities are, when it comes to the place I store my crap in. I want to be comfortable here, I want to be happy with it. I want it to reflect Us. Right now about 23% of it reflects Us. Time to make some changes.
And don’t get me started on the windows. I hate those the most.
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