Our house is not large enough for both of us. We’ve run out of storage areas. Closets are overflowing. Shelves are buckling from excessive weight placed on them. Halls and stairways are cluttered, and space under couches and beds no longer exist.
When Mighty Marc moved in with his worldly possessions, storage space in my home had already been assigned, not only to my belongings, but to everything left to me by my deceased parents and brother. I didn’t have a single drawer to offer him. They were all filled to capacity with treasured items such as waist cinchers, neckerchiefs and dickies left over from my 1950’s high school days, because one day I’ll fit back into those twenty two inch belts, and some day beaver collars with furry ball ties will return to the fashion world and I’ll be ready.
We decided to look for a house with trees and a pool, like we already have, but larger and with more closets and no stairs. My arthritis makes stair climbing increasingly difficult and we have to prepare for the future.
We found several lovely places but when we figured out what expenses would be, we realized we’d never be able to afford to do anything more than sit in the house and stare out the lovely bay windows.
We opted to expand.
After nearly two years of discussion, drawing architectural plans and dealing with town bureaucracy, construction……or should I say destruction….. began on our home. An army of men ascended upon us – each in his own vehicle, so the first weeks were spent directing traffic toward a goal of getting out of my driveway.
“If you move that fork lift over here and the tractor over there, and Jose’ parks the bulldozer on my neighbor’s newly seeded lawn, John can squeeze his pickup truck into that spot between those boulders he just unearthed. That should leave enough room for me to back out onto the street, and barely escape getting rear-ended by oncoming traffic.”
We still haven’t resolved the stair problem. We’ll either put in an elevator or a stair lift. An elevator might work best in the speed department but requires using a chunk of space from one of the rooms. Stair lifts are more space friendly but unless they travel as fast as elevators I could spend the better part of my remaining years staring at stairwell walls.
Although architectural drawings have been completed and sanctioned, and work has already begun, every day brings fresh ideas to my over-active, mercurial mind — most of which include moving more walls, adding windows and ignoring permit-approved drawings. Mighty Marc smiles through it all, and explains to the contractor, “My wife had another dream last night. This one includes removing the roof. I hope that won’t inconvenience you. Her job is to be creative; mine is to keep her happy. But, you’ll see, when the job’s finished you’ll want to take pictures.”
My husband’s no dummy. He’s learned how to appease me during critical times, to preserves his own sanity. He knows how cranky I get when I have to enter and exit my house through windows. He understands when I go berserk because a construction worker on a scaffold smiled at me through my second floor bathroom window. He hugs my quaking body after I’ve endured eight hours of jack hammering. And, he gently restrains me when I explain my need to hurt someone each time I pull carpenter’s nails from my car’s tires.
I have no doubt that the contractor is dying for this project to be complete. His before and after photographs will not only showcase the transformation of our home, but they will also document how I, too, have changed. After two years of living with disruption, a total lack of privacy, and the need to make urgent, immediate decisions, I have changed from perky and cheerful to jerky and tearful.
Leave A Comment