Terry: Living through renovation not like on TV

Life in a construction zone isn’t everything reality TV makes it out to be.

On those half-hour shows where they’re remodeling or flipping a house, they always have a short deadline to add drama to the program. The homeowner or real estate flipper driving the Mercedes spends the first half of the program making changes and the second half trying to hurry the contractors along to meet that TV deadline.

In real life the deadlines are only controlled by the resident’s patience to get their life back or the limits of their checking account.

We started in June by cleaning out the garage so we would have room to move stuff as the work proceeded. In early July the construction crews arrived and started on the outside projects. We timed that so the fence was replaced while we were on vacation and the dogs were boarded.

The vacation wasn’t long enough. It needed to have lasted a month instead of a few days.

Next we had challenges getting work done in the right order. The paint and fascia had to be done before the roof but the roof needed to be finished before we started ceiling repair and popcorn ceiling removal. After a few starts and stops we finally got started on the inside work a couple weeks ago.

It was pretty much like moving, just into the garage. When we packed and moved all that stuff out, we found out just how poor our housekeeping skills really are. We also found the lost phone handset in the bowels of the loveseat.

We suffered through a few days without television until I noticed one night my wife was on the edge. Apparently it was just withdrawals from going without Fox News Channel for more than 12 hours. When I hooked it back up she put down the knife and calmed right down.

She really has been the trooper in this summer of construction. She’s been the one at home listening to the noise and smelling the chemicals and paint. I’m the one that comes home at night and asks her why this was done this way and not the other and what is the plan for tomorrow. She didn’t really seem to care if I got answers to my questions or not.

It was a big step and a lot of money but we bit the bullet and squeezed the savings account to get things back to par. The hardest thing to swallow was as soon as we started the dryer went out and the car needed a pricey repair. Murphey’s Law, I guess.

Things could have been worse. We’ve had great contractors who took the time to do things right and explained things carefully and completely when things weren’t going as planned.

We’re not done yet, but a finish line is at least in sight now. If you need good contractors, let me know. We’ll be done soon. I think they may need a long vacation first after putting up with us for so long.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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