one of the things i love about my husband, and our marriage, is that we’re really good at doing projects together. which is to say that we have complementary, rather than identical, skill sets. i manage things. ben designs things. i keep track of stuff in spreadsheets, ben can mat and frame pictures and then hang them straight. i’m good cop, ben is bad cop. sometimes he throws me under the bus (ben: “it’s my wife, you know, she’s insisting on sourcing these vintage these solid core wood doors.” foreman: “oh, yeah, man, wives. i get it.”), sometimes i throw him under a bus (“listen, i really want to go with the premium windows but my husband thinks it’s a waste of money. is there any way you can come down on the price just a teensy bit more?”). we strategize. we support each other. i see the big picture. he has the patience to do the little things right just when i get exasperated and want to rush through them. when one of us gets overwhelmed, the other one somehow finds a reserve of calm, confidence, and reason. we have a lot of conversations that go like this:
b: “where are you?”
me: “at home depot looking at moulding profiles. i’m suddenly feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of installing our own crown moulding. we can do this, right?”
b: “of course. it’s just the painting of it i’m worried about.”
me: “painting is the easy part. we buy primed moulding, slap two coats of paint on it before we install it, and touch up after it’s done. i’m intimidated by learning to mitre corners.”
b: “mitring corners is the easy part. i can do that.”
me: “we can totally do this.”
it turns out that making a play is nothing more than a set of russian nesting projects. we both majored in projects. projects are in our career DNA. planning a labor-intensive DYI wedding (simultaneous with a cross-country move through a trick of unfortunate timing) taught us that the skills we’ve honed in our theatre careers are applicable just about everywhere else. our wedding vows included the phrase “i will support your dreams, your projects and your harebrained schemes.” which, as it turns out, is a pretty good description of what buying and renovating a vacant building in the middle of the worst winter chicago has seen since 1978* is really like.
what happened this week? well, it appears that the plumber is still chasing down leaks, judging from the rapidly deteriorating condition of the 1st floor kitchen ceiling. there are a number of expensive projects on hold (refinishing floors, replacing windows) because we’re waiting to find out of there’s some very expensive disaster related to the plumbing that we have to deal with first.
the foreman plowed ahead and framed out and installed cheap steel doors, apparently because the contractor never told him we wanted to find our own vintage doors. then he tried to tell Ben that we couldn’t keep changing things on him, which is when Ben threw me under the bus. he and the foreman had a good manly moment acknowledging the demands of their wives, and we all moved on. so this beautiful wood door that we found at a salvage yard will be the front door of the first floor apartment, but our apartment will have the cheap steel door and tacky stock frame with contemporary moulding that is nothing like the moulding profile of the rest of the house. le sigh. first world problems.
i made the first mortgage payment. i pitched a fit about doors. i might have shed a tear or two over our contractor’s inability to return a phone call. the internets taught me a lot about door hardware, and faucet plumbing. it snowed. again. i looked at a bazilion images of front porch railings on pinterest. i made appointments with three painters and two floor refinishers to bid on work that we’re not yet sure we can afford. a window salesman came and gave us his pitch. it snowed some more. i learned that a surprisingly large number of wood restoration companies throughout the country are named ‘the strip joint’. ben finished drafting the plan whereby we turn two tiny bedrooms into a master bedroom, a pantry, a walk-in closet and a linen closet. closets! we will have both vintage charm AND closets!
given the distinct lack of communication between our contractor and his foreman, we have our doubts about whether they will actually move the walls around to the right places. the dimensions are all right there on the drawing, but it’s not clear that anyone who is doing the work is looking at the drawing. so, returning to our theatre roots, this morning we went by the house and taped out the positions of all the new walls and doors:
