DIY

Prologue

Dilapidated [dih-lap-i-dey-tid]

1. reduced to or fallen into partial ruin or decay, as from age, wear, or neglect.

2. the house that you just bought

I remember the exact moment that I came to the brutal realization that the American Dream was dead.  I was standing in the darkness of the crawl space beneath our house in two feet of muddy water, pushing floating Christmas decorations and high school diplomas aside as I searched blindly for the water shutoff valve that I knew to be somewhere in the vicinity of the stored lawn chairs.  The Dream, of course, was home ownership, and all of the satisfaction and enjoyment that came with it.  Enjoyment like wading around in flooded crawl spaces while cursing the memory of the dumbass who first thought that bringing water into a house was a good idea.  I had bought into the hype, and had spent the better part of five years ignoring the physical and psychological trauma of home ownership while plodding stubbornly toward the allusion that America was selling. It all ended that day as I knelt alone in the dark water after finding and closing the valve that controlled the flow of water into the house.  The sudden silence was stark, and broken only by the rapid beat of my heart and the drip of sweat falling from my brow into the slurry of mud, water, and Christmas tree tensel.  I was beaten.  The House had won.  The dream was dead. 

My journey to the crawlspace was neither short or direct.  Ann and I had dreamed of owning our own home since the day we were married on a mountain in Alaska.  We had purchased and remodeled two other houses before settling into the third, and current, one.  It was the third that contained the crawlspace that had now become my space for reflection and the tallying of regrets.  I remembered the fun we had remodeling the other houses, and how excited we were to move into the granddaddy of fixer-uppers.  We were upbeat and optimistic that the challenge would both fun and rewarding, but somewhere between the electrical fire and the current flood our enthusiasm had waned.  The emotional trauma of trying to salvage a sinking ship was too much.  The wood was soaked through and rotten, the sails worn and filled with holes, and the water was quickly rising above the decks.  It was time to abandon ship.

The thing is, not all homes are rotting wooden structures on the verge of collapse.  All homes start as fresh and new, and some people even buy them that way, but houses do not stay new for long and gradually settle into categories that are somewhat less than new.  In fact, one of the first things you learn when you are in the market for your first house are the various types of houses for sale.  The newly constructed home is first of the five major types of homes.  The others being Like New, needs updating, outdated, and train wreck.  We have lived in three of the five types of homes. Our first house needed updating, while the second was clearly outdated.  Our current one sits proudly in the last category: Train Wreck. The problem with the Train Wreck home is that it’s not a category that presents itself during the home buying process.  No one wants to buy a train wreck.  This type of house appears to need some updating, and it is not until later, after the documents are signed and possession has been taken, that the actual condition of the home manifests itself.  Calling a house a train wreck seems a little harsh until you examine the parallels between owning a home in this category and an actual train crash.  Indulge me.

Imagine, if you will, spending the day in the countryside aboard a rail car filled with people chatting and laughing easily while drinking cocktails and enjoying the beauty of nature as it passes smoothly by the window.  Life is good.  The day is young and filled with promise, and the passengers are still giddy with the anticipation of the many wonders that they will surely behold on this particular adventure. 

This scene coincides, metaphorically, with house hunting for your dream home.  The future is bright with the promise of many beautiful houses to explore until the perfect home for your particular family is found.  The mood is light and laughter falls easily from the lips of the house hunters as they wind their way through the town gleefully exploring and inspecting each house.  This is the part where the hope for a wonderful new experience still lives, and possibilities are still endless.

Back to the train.

Now imagine a lazy, bloated cow the size of a small sports car squeezing through a break in the fence and onto the very tracks on which your train is currently traveling.  The breaks scream as the engineer spots the cow and frantically applies the emergency break.  Drinks spill as the passengers are thrown by the weight of the train as it tries desperately to break the laws of momentum and gravity by performing a perfect stop without leaving the tracks.  Alas, it cannot, and the train slowly gives in to the forces that will see that it all ends with rail cars toppling and spilling from the tracks in the merry chaos that is a train wreck. 

In this part of the metaphor, you have just signed the final paperwork to purchase the home of your dreams and are spending the first night exploring in more detail the many wonders of the house that you overlooked when performing a simple walk through inspection.  A blissful state of ignorance still enshrouds you like a peaceful fog as you explore your new environment, but beyond the fog and the protective shield of your innocence lies one indisputable fact: your train has just left the tracks.

The thing is, if you are smart enough to buy a new house, or at least, a newer house, you will never need to understand or experience the phenomenon of the train wreck.  That’s because the house will likely be in good shape and cannot be classified as a Fixer Upper’.  The Fixer Upper, for those of you that are blessed enough to be unaware, is a house that needs a little bit of work."  Typically, the house will be thirty to forty years old, have been home to at least three generations of families, and still be operating on the original septic system.  Bonus points are given if the home has never been upgraded, and still sports the window coverings that were popular when the movie Gone with the Wind was still amazing people with its Technicolor. The full definition of the term Fixer Upper is met if every bathroom fixture is colored either in pink, lime green, or sun yellow, and clashes intentionally with the flower wallpaper that can be ordered in bulk by its commercial name: Outdoor Tablecloth No. 4.  If this sounds like the house that you just purchased, welcome to the club.  Grab a drink because you’re going to need it.

The home that we settled on was the very definition of the term Fixer Upper, and likely would have dominated the Holiday Edition of Fixer Upper Monthly had such a periodical existed.  It was built in 1976, had never been upgraded, and was still on its first septic system.  The bathroom fixtures were a wonderful blend of green and pink, with dark brown cabinets that did a fairly decent job of hiding thirty years of dirt and grime.  Five different families had also raised their children in the house, which was two more than the distinction required.  This house had Train Wreck written all over it.

The real question is: how could seemingly intelligent people walk through the house assessing the condition, and then review an inspection report prepared by a professional, and still end up with a train wreck?  When we walked through the house it seemed like a fine example of mid-1970’s architecture that could easily be transformed into a home that would be welcoming and comfortable until we decided to sell it for twice the purchase price.  Like a train wreck, it began with the giddy anticipation of a new and exciting experience, followed by numb disbelief as the train left the tracks, and ending with the sad realization that this was really going to hurt.  In fact, I would say that the only difference between our new house and an actual train wreck is that when a train crashes someone else comes along and cleans up the mess.

The location of our particular train wreck is Anchorage, Alaska, where our children have lived their entire lives.  We love Alaska for the environmental diversity that it offers, and the unique people that share the state with us.  Anchorage is the place where the Chugach Mountains meet the sea at Cook Inlet.  Hiking and biking trails crisscross a community of people that are as comfortable commuting by car as they are by boat, snow machine, or airplane.  The human population mixes respectfully, and somewhat cautiously, with an abundance of wildlife that includes bear, moose, wolves, and miners.  It is in this thriving community that we found a home that would one day be perfect for us.

We had previously been fortunate in the houses that we had chosen.  Each house needed some repair and updating because we could never afford a home that was in new condition, but the work was minimal and did not affect our quality of life in the home.  In fact, the sweat equity we put into each house was the only reason that we realized a profit when we eventually sold the home.  Somewhere between the last house and the current one we had lost our way. 

Our initial attraction to the new house was the large size of the structure, and the spacious yard that it rested on.  The details were lost to us as we considered moving our children and assorted pets into a house that would not only fit all of our furniture, but allow us to spread out a little, enjoying each other from a comfortable distance.  The house seemed perfect in size and layout, and so we might have missed some subtle clues that should have warned us that there were some major issues with the structure that had the potential to derail our dreams.

We smiled as we signed the paperwork that would allow us to board this particular train, and once aboard, made toasts to our luck in finding such a train that would surely carry our family through many a beautiful countryside.  On the day that we took possession of the house, we lit a fire in the hearth, opened a special bottle of wine to commemorate the occasion, and settled into the warm embrace of our new home. 

I remember the lights flickering once before dying.

Chapter 1 – The Search for Home

House   [hou-ziz]

a building in which people live; residence for human beings.

A place to go after work to work.

The concept of Home has always been elusive to me.  I grew up in a military family so the idea of staying somewhere long enough to plant roots was more of a fanciful dream than a reality.  As a child I remember living briefly in various small towns and large cities across the United States and overseas.  My school mates in the U.S. were generally from whichever city that we were currently living in and were not only familiar with the concept of Home but were actually living in one.  They had long term friends and family that went back generations, and when they had Thanksgiving dinner, it wasn't just immediate family, but a large extended one. My school mates overseas were military kids going to an English school, who moved on average every couple of years and, like me, had a vague understanding of what it would be like settling comfortably into a community where you would grow up and raise your own children.  No one complained about our lot in life - it was all we knew - and frankly it seemed more interesting and fun than living in the same house for a lifetime.  How boring would that be?

People that grow up on the move go one of two ways:  they either find a place after school and stay there forever, refusing to budge for the rest of their lives, or they keep moving.  I was the latter.  After spending a year in college trying to find something that seemed like a good fit for me, and failing, I joined the military.  I felt compelled to keep moving for a while longer, but I wasn't interested in being an Army or Air Force guy, so I joined the Coast Guard.  The Coast Guard is a military branch that focuses on search & rescue, law enforcement, and humanitarian missions.  During wartime they join the Navy and do more warlike things, but the