The Fixer-Upper

There is a house in my neighborhood that seems to be forever undergoing repairs.  Tim and I like to discuss their progress while out on walks (does this make us old?).  With all the interest of two objective bystanders (whose money is not involved), we make comments like, “they should paint that,” and “why do you suppose they put a window there?” and “well looky, the family moved back inside.  Or otherwise the construction crew put some flowers in vases to cheer themselves up.”  

  

We even have an ongoing bet as to whether or not the repairs will be complete by the time we move back stateside in a year and half.

As Boo-Radleyish of us as this may sound, the fact of the matter is that we’re fixer-upper people.  Tim is a jack-of-all trades kind of handy-man, and I like to wear coveralls and pretend I’m helping by painting and re-painting the walls All of The Colors.  (The living room alone went from stark white to a disappointing shade of beige misleadingly called An Attractive Color to pale blue to ochre yellow  - yes, you may now ask if I had a temperature – to red.  And the yellow and red happened all in one night because I couldn’t handle the yellow.)

Granted, our one and only attempt at repairing a roadside ramshackle (our first home, which we like to call The Fort or Hell), turned out badly, but it wasn’t due to a lack of interest or never-ending ‘tweaks.’   Unfortunately, tweaking was about all we could do because we hadn’t any money.  Thank God for coupons from Home Depot or we might have thrown in the towel when the roof got that leak, the downstairs plumbing went awry, and the electrical system caught fire and burned the place down.

(I wish that last one had actually happened so we could’ve collected the insurance.)

Oddly enough, we still get the occasional hankering for a nice little real estate project … like the Loft-meets-Coffeehouse fixer-upper I hope we find when we move back home.  Only this time, we’ll have lots more coffee to cheer us up when the thing goes bust.