I’m sitting here in a haze of fine powder settling all over my walls and floors, exhausted, dirty and glad to be finished with a weekend of renovations, at least for now.
It all started on Friday night when the hubby and I started talking about knocking down a couple of walls to clear some room in the house. I should have known by the twinkle in his eyes that this was more than idle conversation. While not a labourer by trade, he seems to take a profound satisfaction in the chance to buy new tools, wear the same grimy shirt for a stretch of time, and then after however many days of grunts and cursing, seeing the tangible result of hard work done by hand.
He’s pretty well alone in this. I despise the disorder of renovations and have no practical skills to speak of, unless you count inane parenting skills like being able to get shampoo out of a child’s eyes without making them cry, or the ability to finish all the leftovers after a meal so there’s not much to pack away.
But the prospect of home improvement had me grab a hammer and start thrashing the wall. I also had a go on Tom’s new toy, a reciprocal saw, which I put through the drywall and then had to desperately hold on to as it zig-zagged up the wall.
“Did you make a hole for that before putting it in the drywall?” he asked. “Nope,” I answer proudly. “It just slid in like a knife in butter.”
I try again, and instead of sliding through like a knife in butter, it bounces crazily against the wall like a woodpecker, pockmarking the wall everywhere.
“Maybe I’d better take that from you,” he says, patiently, hoisting it back.
Then it came time to glue the moldings along the new window frame. The first mould fell of the wall in a few minutes, while the second fell off a few seconds later.
The hubby looked at the box and grunted – liquid nails for concrete. “Yeah, this won’t work. I barely looked at it when I picked it up.”
“I have an idea!” I nearly shout, excited finally to be contributing to the effort. “I can use my glue gun.”
He looked dubious, but I was sure that this was the moment I would be useful, so I ran to patch it up again. In two minutes, both my glue-gun jobs were up, and in another two minutes, they were down again. I decided to keep my bright ideas to myself. I was starting to feel like the hapless Tim Allan from Home Improvement.
It’s times like this that I feel like a walking cliché – a woman who can’t change a tire or who can barely wield a hammer. But as night falls, the hubby puts away his tools and it’s my turn to step up to the plate, cleaning up the mess. By the time Sunday night rolls around, we can see our new living room taking shape. While I struggle with chaos and disorder, I give my husband full credit for his ability to smash things to oblivion to build it anew. After all, there’s the truth in the lyric, “There’s a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
