Home is Where the Heartburn Is

A Week in the Life of an Amateur Contractor

The Nude Prudes’ housebuilding project staggers on, leaving little time for comic invention. But taking a page from the Mad Farmer’s book, we decided to let the problem become the solution and find the humor in our immediate surroundings. Turns out we didn’t have to look very hard…

Monday—The conversations are by far the most enriching part of working in a small community. My foreman and I are measuring doorframes for the second time, because the first time was so much fun. My foreman asks me if I believe in Bigfoot. I say I do.

“Not possible,” he says. “They would have found bones. We have found the bones of Jesus of Nazareth, there is no way they wouldn’t find Bigfoot bones.” I haven’t the heart to tell him that this discovery would have rendered 2000 years of Christian tradition defunct.

We bring the doorframe measurements across the street to the wood-shop that my brothers own. The shop guys can build the doors, brother #1 has informed me. I won’t have to buy lumber because we have scrap lumber, and the guys know how to do it. For some reason, whenever he says, “the guys know how to do it,” a chill goes down my spine. I think it’s a nervous system issue.

“You’re going to have to buy lumber,” brother #2 says when we arrive with the measurements. It has long been my theory that my brothers communicate through tin cans.

“Can’t afford that,” I say. “Why don’t we just use the old doors in the brick building? They’re free.”

“Time is money,” he tells me. “By the time you scrape them and resize them, you might as well just buy lumber.”

“But I don’t have money,” I tell him. “I have time.”

“Time is money,” he says. We appear to be talking at cross purposes. “Anyway, we might have enough scrap lumber.”

I say ok, but I have to run out for twenty minutes. I’m on my way back when he calls.

“We’re going to use the old doors from the brick building,” he tells me. “Otherwise you’re going to have to buy lumber.” I want to beat him over the head with a tin can, but I shudder to think what that would do to the communication systems.

Tuesday—I haul five 200-year-old doors out the front doors of our abandoned brick building and into the truck. The entire side of the building is gone, so the use of the front door is a mere formality, but one which we all observe with the zeal commonly seen in dowager countesses toward their salad forks. I carefully shut and padlock the door behind me.

Myself and my foreman begin sanding down the first door. I remove three screws carefully from the metal plate behind the knob, admiring the craftsmanship as I do so.

“Look at the little bolt,” I say.

“You can probably slide it right off now,” says my foreman. It is still sticking—there’s a screw on the other side. “You can probably slide it right off now,” repeats my foreman. I go to get a flathead screwdriver. “You can probably slide it right off now,” reiterates my very helpful foreman, approaching with a hammer. Whether or not it would have “slid right off” will never be known, because my foreman, for no doubt excellent reasons of his own, chooses to bash the doorknob repeatedly with the hammer until it is scattered around the room in several pieces and a giant hole marks the spot where once it protruded. “You would have taken all day,” he says.

Wednesday—I do not plan to be on the worksite today, but around 1 o’clock, I receive a call from my brother-in-law’s sister’s husband’s grandmother. “There’s a herd of goats loose up by the post office,” she tells me. “A mama and five babies.”

“Can’t be mine,” I say. “I only have four.”

But I decide to check it out anyway. I arrive at shop to find that they are indeed mine, and the whole neighborhood has turned out to bring them home. We cross the highway in a stately parade. The news makes the prestigious Suspicious Activity In and Around Austinburg Facebook page: “Four goats running eastbound on 307.” It gets 26 likes.

Thursday—I have to go pick up hay for the goats over lunch break—perhaps this will prevent another mass exodus. It’s a farm I have never been to before, but I am met by five very informative children, led by a six-year-old boy. They show me their pig, their goats, their chickens, their treehouse, their dog, their buckeye tree and a trick that they do by propping a ladder against the tree and falling backwards off it. They also show me how the dog can put his paws on my shoulders, and then introduce themselves because they weren't supposed to talk to me until they introduced themselves. The boy offers me a kitten as we are loading the hay bales, and tells me I can pull into the barn and turn around, but please not to hit the skid steer because it breaks down a lot. He says he has a new baby sister.

“How old is she?” I ask.

“I don’t pay attention to that kind of thing,” he answers.

I understand, he clearly has a lot on his plate.

Friday—Our drywaller shows up to finish out our windows. He begins unloading his tools. It has been only two short months since he proposed marriage—I hope he has forgotten. He tells me he is preparing to move to Arizona now that Trump is sending the Mexicans back across the border. He says he is thinking of starting a rehab clinic there. He nudges me and asks if I would like to come along. I tell him it can never be, but I will always think fondly of our time together. At the rate this house has progressed, it is not unlikely he will see me as a client.

My brother comes to check out the front door that was installed last week—one of the few projects we paid a professional to do. We need not have bothered, because it was apparently installed wrong, something we can do very well on our own. They didn’t use a “router” on the hinges, he tells me, but it should be ok— the shop guys know how to do it.

—C.C.