Friday – House By Cheech and Chong

[ninanevermore]

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"Look!" my husband exclaimed when I came home yesterday, "We have baseboards!"

He has recently started the start-and-stop process of paining the dining room again. It's been ongoing for about 2 years now.

"Neat," I said. The baseboards still need painting. Maybe in a couple more years, that will happen.

"And you know what?"

I didn't.

He pointed to the half wall that divides the kitchen and the dining room. "There are no two by fours in that wall. No stud every 16 inches. None of that. There is nothing anywhere to nail the baseboard to, so I had to #*&!ing glue it on."

"So, it's just a hunk of drywall?"

"Pretty much."

I grinned. "See, you expect studs and boards and all that stuff 'cause you think they were building a house here back in the seventies. What they were doing was creating a home, man. It's not about letting the man tell you where to put a stud, it's about using your creativity to guide you and make a space to live in, man. Look," I pointed to the soffit above the kitchen cabinets that is an inch shorter on one side of the cabinet than it is on the other, "See? You don't need levels and t-squares and all that stuff. That's too square, man, because a square, level space is what people expect. What you have to do is smoke some dope and then do what you want so you can blow their minds and their expectations. It's not about following the rules other people have laid out, it's about expanding their minds by doing the unexpected. And it's about the dope smoking."

"And the drinking," Jeff added, "Don't forget the drinking."

"Well, yeah, when you run out of dope, you have to drink to keep your buzz going. How are you supposed to build a house without a buzz?"

"You really can't. Not if you want great results like you see here."

"Exactly."

It's got me thinking about cause and effect. Obviously, the builders of house were non-conformist type guys who liked to do home construction in creative ways. Maybe if Jeff and I started drinking and smoking a lot of dope, like they apparently did, this place wouldn't make us feel so crazy. The few strait lines would start to look crooked, and we wouldn't notice they were any different from the others.

Thirty some odd years ago, a drunk stoner build a house and painted it bright orange because bright colors look so cool when you're high. When we did some work on the outside we uncovered some of that original paint job and our eyes grew wide with horror. It's been through a few owners (and paint jobs) since then. The owners before us defaulted on their mortgage, no doubt because living in this house drove them to drink and they quit caring about their finances as their lives spiraled out of control. Then it sat vacant for a period of time waiting for the right morons to come along and think, "Hey, it has potential...with enough elbow grease, we could make this place livable," not realizing that the quantity of elbow grease in question would fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

My husband and I were those morons.

Hi, my name is Nina. I am not yet an alcoholic, but give me time.



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Comments

[millysdaughter.livejournal.com]

Hi, Nina, I'm Nikki and I am a moron too.


And we have been working on THIS house since 1980.

[drippedonpaper.livejournal.com]

I'm Maria. And this house needs so much work, it's sad. The 3 children and a puppy aren't helping the condition any either:P

Nina- I love your Christmas letters about the house. What happened to torching it?:)

[millysdaughter.livejournal.com]

My neighbor -- Lila-across-the-street -- grandmotherly church lady with never a bad word to say about anything or anyone -- her husband was fixing an electric plug that had sparked and caught a bit of insulation on fire. He put it out quickly, with no damage to the house because of his fast reaction.
She shook her head sadly and told us, "he shoulda let it burn."

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

A lady after my own heart!

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I'm not allowed to bring up arson anymore. Jeff gets all bent out of shape and starts ranting about how if I'd just give it time, this place is gonna be great and he's doing his best and blah, blah, blah.

He loves this house.

That's because, like the house, he has a few screws lose.

I love him anyway.

[simplecity2htwn.livejournal.com]

Not too long after we moved into this house, another one of the homes in the development caught fire. I was amazed at the speed with which is burned to the ground. A&M's bondfire had nothing on it. About 2 years later, it happened again to another house. It wasn't until I was working on the floor and posted some pictures on the internet that a very helpful contractor explained to me that there should be a fire barrier between the lower and upper level of the homes and that mine apparently had none. He was perplexed as to how this would ever have passed a county inspection when the home was built. Shortly after that, a workman explained to me how inspection of newly built homes in the Houston area has always been kind of "iffy".

That goes a long way to explaining the wavy walls, "improvised" plumbing and wiring, and questionable decisions on whether or not a given patch of land is adequate for building in the first place.

I understand (and raise a glass to) your need to drink.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I was at A&M back when they had the bonfire. That sucker took a couple of hours to burn, unlike your neighbors house.

If you are a home builder and you make a big enough contribution to the right politician in Harris County, I'm sure all the houses you build will pass inspection. In fact, they'll be so well build that they will pass inspection with the inspector even having to step foot on the property! Money is magic like that.

[ignusfaatus.livejournal.com]

durrr
i hope that is not supposed to be a loadbearing wall

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's a half wall with a cabinet on one side. Or rather, a chunk of drywall with a cabinet on one side. The house isn't going to fall over.

I'm not that lucky, for one.

[jessnhalinda.livejournal.com]

Well, at least they tried to build houses in the 70's. In the 60's, didn't they just smoke dope in their yurts?

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I wish the hippies had just stuck to macrame and left the housebuilding to the experts. *sigh*

[jenelycam.livejournal.com]

I hear you on the years long projects. We painted our daycare room 3 years ago. And the baseboards are still missing. Greg says it's because he doesn't want to buy baseboards that the daycare kids will ruin, but I think it's his cheapness and laziness. LOL

I think the people who lived her before us smoked crack. they PLASTERED over drywall. WTF? And lots of other issues that we didn't have a clue on. True, if we'd have hired a real inspector, he might have found some of the issues, but not all of them...I'm sure.

*HUGS*

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

So...no baseboards are better than scuffed ones? Leave it to a man to come up with that one. :)

[jenelycam.livejournal.com]

I think he's thinking beyond scuffed. I have some pretty...um...abusive kids. They ruin everything. But old cheap baseboards would do the trick, me thinks.

And yeah, leave it to a man. LOL

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

But, that's like saying, "Why do laundry, since the clothes are only going to get dirty?" Your poor walls are standing there naked. o.O