If living in homes that have skirting had long condemned me to the outskirts of society, constructing 2,000 square feet of community acceptance did not, as the lads from Liverpool famously intoned “come easy.” At all.
Gassed up by imagined stigma and compelled to provide our son with a home that wouldn’t tip over in a tornado, I embarked five years ago on the most difficult endeavor of a life that’s been bucking the wind for decades. Difficult? Try excruciating. The self-assigned task I was unprepared and unsuited for would make Homer’s Odyssey seem like a daytrip to Kennywood. A buck-toothed beaver would be more qualified to get a house built-at least those choppers could provide the wood. All that I could furnish was desperation borne of tin dwellings shoehorned so close together that the neighbors watched CSI MIAMI through our cheap wind-up windows and could follow every strand of DNA evidence. When they weren’t pirating our WI-FI (from aluminum chairs shamelessly positioned smack-dab in our sliver of yard).
And money. We certainly furnished that, first divesting most of our stock accounts, then our savings, and finally, large chunks of mine and Jan’s respective pensions. That sage green structure just above the state barn did not come cheaply-cue Elvis: “I ain’t greedy baby , all I want is what you got.” But no way with more route 2 behind than in front of us would we burden Shane with some ball-and-chain mortgage. I would develop ulcers-literally-from blind guessing each cost in constructing a home. Property..plumbing..electricity..wood. Thus evaporated the First Choice account. Foundation..flooring..showers..sinks. Should I continue? My 401k likewise did a David Copperfield.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: Once the property had been purchased (30k, if you’re curious), my first move was to secure cabinets. That’s the funny part about your first house: Each family member harbors some pet notion of what better living looks like. For me, and there just IS no logical explanation for this; it was cabinets. GREAT cabinets, not the flimsy particle board kind. In that pursuit, I was tipped onto a near-legendary Amish craftsman whose quality, it was said, beat the bejesus out of box stores, and who, better yet, struck generous bargains in exchange for dead presidents. Cash on the buggy-head, so to speak.
If the longest journey commences with a single stride, my first step was a labyrinthian three-hour drive (It did cross my mind that the S.S. Minnow went permanently astray in similar time.) to an off-the-grid Erie lair. Ensconced there, some bearded dude with no mustache jotted notes while scanning the blue prints (I would for two years lug around like an umbilical cord) in his blue shirt, lowered his Santa Clause spectacles, and quoted an obscenely low price for kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, media-room desk and bookshelves-plus a (California-king) bedroom set complete with dresser and nightstand-each item, it would result, an ornate, crown-molded masterpiece hewn from solid oak. There would be times during the next 36 months when those soft-close beauties calling out to me from a snowbound barn were the one thing that kept me going.
Providing those cabinets a proper home seemed an impossible quest after less scrupulous proponents of the Abe Lincoln facial hair philosophy backed out of building the place, a betrayal that left our dearly purchased property strewn with vinyl siding, metal roofing, and mud clumps from a partially excavated driveway. A rosy picture, my prematurely purchased building components did not make. Only a paralyzing fear of reptiles-I’ve never actually SEEN a snake on our land-kept me from pitching a tent , so I could someday at least say I’d inhabited the land, and to guard against theft. (Believe it or not, a shredded tarp covering what would be our driveway was the sole thing pilfered from the property. That and something I almost forgot: a short, scrawny, pine tree sawed off cleanly and presumably whisked away by the Peanuts gang.)
Enter one George McIntosh, devout adherent to his word and miraculous resurrector of dreams-even those dying in the mud. “I can build a house from that,” said the proprietor of Shamrock Enterprises after a cursory look at the project I’d mangled. The 60 something Newell native blatantly over-delivered, stepping up to supervise the other tradesmen (a notoriously recalcitrant breed, I would learn) and bringing our three-bedroom blueprint to life-complete with kick-ass bar anchoring a finished basement he wisely suggested. We don’t drink much, but what the man cobbled from left-over hardwood pieces defies belief. Best of all, he believed me when I pledged to keep the cash coming, a highly unusual means of financing something usually funded through a builder’s access to your bank loan. George sees the best, both in people, and in lost causes. Otherwise, we would still be chasing chipped skirting after every stiff wind.
Other participants in the building process get lower grades. Cost wise, no complaints. I developed a simple formula for allotting sufficient cash for each aspect: Simply imagine the most outrageous sum any service might conceivably run- and add 50%. I’m not kidding, and this method NEVER missed. Blame covid inflation and supply/demand. In other words: You might have the demand, but THEY have the supply. Let me put it even more simply: plumbers, electricians, and their ilk, do not need you. They have business out the yin yang. You, however, very much need them. Thus, they charge what they want, show up when they want, do as much as they want, take their leave when they want, and return when they want. Desperate to see our new home come together, I spied for their presence like paparazzi. The drywall dude became Mick Jagger to me. I swooned like a groupie every time he pulled in.
Some of them charged me just their standard rate, while one or two others, smelling a novice to the ways of home infrastructure, teed me up to take advantage. Like a low-compression Titleist. I did draw the line when my painter offered to wood-stain that custom bar-just the trim and shelving, mind you, the top is finished hardwood-for the “special discount price” of $5,000. That’s three months’ salary at Wendie’s. For a task that might have required four hours of his time. Cardiac surgeons work cheaper. And just spit balling here, but I’m guessing that pacemakers cost more than a can of wood stain. I think I was his retirement plan. Actually, I get it: Since I need housing nearly as much as I do a functioning ticker, his paint brush might as well have been a scalpel
If enlisting honest, competent, tradesmen proved tricky; I only made matters worse through initial attempts to stretch our money. Blustering buddies willing to work for beer, I would learn the hard way, cannot stand in for stone-cold professionals. Since unlicensed people-other than the property owner- can’t legally participate in construction, one pal who claimed he could run a bulldozer had me rent one, clamored onboard, and gleefully fired ‘er up, fully intending to “prep” the property-while disguised in a neon- orange Bozo-wig. See, because that’s how you operate undetected-by dressing like Ronald McDonald and lurching around pointlessly on a clamoring piece of heavy machinery. “What, exactly, was he doing, if you don’t mind my asking, I mean that Pennywise dude,” inquired Nate, the absolute gem of a REAL excavator (and apparent Stephen King fan) eventually hired to repair our rutted land. ”Was he not digging a proper driveway,?” was my sadly rhetorical response. “No, Mark, he was not,” said the first certified professional (and I man-love him for this) to take part in our epic project. Suffice to say that the rental company was not pleased upon retrieving the hopelessly entrenched (and AWOL) Bobcat long abandoned by “Bozo.” I hid behind a tree when they came.
Those genuine tradesmen, however, who treated us fairly, even, in some cases leading our lack of construction knowledge reassuringly by the hand, made friends of us for life. Not just George, but also Ivan, his noble first knight ( a gentle giant who refuses to climb-which I can relate to), “Bad Billy” (who does climb, like a spider monkey-all the better for Shamrock clients that prefer new homes WITH roofing), and, of course, young Nick, a reputedly rifle-armed, if slow of foot (by his own admission), former Oak Glen quarterback yet unskilled to the construction trade, but possessing the good sense to marry a well-paid RN (He can trust me on the wisdom of THAT decision.) Gratitude, as well, to jack-of-all-trades Luciano, a handyman so scrupulous as to be christened “Saint Lucy,” by your humble columnist, on national TV, no less.
Not knowing a roof truss from a hernia truss (Come to think of it, they both function as support.), I served both as gofer and (highly) unskilled laborer. This entailed countless trips to Lowes and Home Depot, so many, in fact, that female employees there must have thought I was stalking them. And no matter how precisely George or Lucy described whatever I’d been dispatched to buy, invariably. I would bungle my marching orders and come back with the wrong item. Thus, 90-minute roundtrips to the Chippewa home improvement center would be brutally echoed and repeated. I made MANY things into Groundhog Day.
I also volunteered as “the cleaner.” But do not picture suave, authoritative Harvey Keitel in his Pulp Fiction dinner jacket. Instead, think bumbling fat guy in Steeler hoodie chanting “burn baby, burn” at endless stacks of boxes and surplus materials, while hoping such pyromania was even legal, and, of course, that some stiff westward wind would not sacrifice his burgeoning home on the altar of stupidity.
Who knows how many laws I ran afoul of in attempting to put trailer life in the rear-view mirror. I’m sure that certain “neighbors” could answer that. (not the ones on Rolling Acres-they could not have been more welcoming). Who else could possibly have complained about Dasani-logged tradesmen taking “relief” in the (largely secluded) backyard? Only one or two particular vantage points could have spied such scandalous indiscretion-and only then with keenly trained binoculars. If obviously bored whistle blowers were indeed THAT desperate to enliven their days (Had the plotlines staled on “All My Children?”), I’m guessing one or two unattached (but still firmly attached, if you get my drift) workers might have suggested a private showing. /
Another (or was it the same?) good Samaritan was diligent enough to sic the highway department on us. Inviolable l-a-w, it would seem, precludes forging an even makeshift driveway at a distance deemed too close to a perpendicular road. Confused? So was I. And willfully defiant-since common sense and convenience dictated that the influx of workman and materials access the property from the flat portion near Veteran’s Blvd. Especially when the steep part became treacherous with ice. You’d better believe, though, that the threat of “Jersey Barriers,” which Tony Soprano might invoke on a wiretap, quickly resulted in my quivering compliance. That’s why the permanent driveway wound up so ridiculously low on the property.
Check it out the next time you drive by. It leads to the sage colored house on the corner of Rolling Acres and old Route 8. The single-story, split personality dwelling that starts off plainly before rising to hey-look-at-me peaks. The one that probably gives off a somewhat inviting, if mildly discordant, vibe-like a cute, rebellious kid torn between between goth and conformity. And, oh , yeah, one more thing: That tornado two years back could not put a dent in it.Sent from Outlook
Mark Patterson
