Renovations R Us

 

The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent shelter-at-home regulations have turned me into something of an FYI Network junkie.

Admittedly, I occasionally watched a bit of “Texas Flip-N-Move” on Saturday mornings while eating breakfast before the pandemic. I really enjoyed that show. Unfortunately, since lockdown, other shows have taken its place.

Especially this summer, between my morning bike ride, taking the dog for a walk and the afternoon in the pool, or on rainy days, I’d tune in to one of two or sometimes three FYI channels to see the latest in home renovation.

Over the course of several months, I’ve learned a few things, like what to make sure your home inspector checks when buying a new – or not-so-new house, and that I don’t like subway tile.

I’ve discovered, too, what I like and don’t like of the various offerings.

As I said, “Texas Flip-N-Move” was a favorite. Several individuals, couples or groups make their living bidding on houses that would otherwise be torn down – the insides of which are sight unseen. The hour follows them moving the house, either to their work land or to a new permanent piece of land that will be auctioned with the house.

The next step is to set about fixing the house, or at times, turning a different type of building into a house. Much of the building – cabinets, walls, closets, etc. – is done by these flippers. They don’t order pre-made kitchen cabinets for the most part. In fact, sometimes they use items like cabinets or other furniture saved from previous flips as part of the redesign. The style, for the most part, is very much country/Texas.

My favorites on the show are the Snow Sisters. They come across as a bit hayseed, not the sharpest crayon types, but I think it’s part of the show’s shtick because they’ve repeatedly shown themselves as top-notch interior designers. It’s rare for one of their flips to go for less at auction than what they spent plus a tidy profit. And I really like most of their designs.

There are also others who bid on these houses. The Snow Sisters have a niece or three who also flip houses, and there are a married couple, three guys who are brothers, and a guy who mostly works solo. I’m pretty sure most of them are somehow related to the Snow Sisters.

Another of my favorite DIY shows features Mike Holmes, a Canadian home renovator. He started out with “Holmes Makes It Right,” in which he comes in and fixes what other construction crews or remodelers have done wrong to people’s homes, or just not done at all.

 I’ve learned a lot from his shows, especially how electrical and plumbing should not be done. Those are two things he and his crew nearly always have to re-do.

Mike Holmes has branched out. He has several shows, including “Holmes on Homes,” where he goes with home buyers to see three different homes they’re considering buying. He shows them all of the things that will need to be fixed, and discusses what they want to renovate before they move in. Once they have the information on how much those things will cost, they decide which house is the best option for them.

His son and daughter have joined his crew. (“Holmes and Holmes”) They add fun as well as their own style of interior design.

Something I particularly like about his crew is it includes women. He trains women apprentices as well as men in the construction business, and it’s great to see how they learn and grow throughout the shows.

There are a couple of shows I’ve watched once or twice, and didn’t like.

“Living off the Grid” is primarily about building primitive homes with solar panels for heat and electricity in Alaska. Even if the homes are as comfortable as any, I’m just not into log cabin chic.

“Barnwood Builders” is also on my must-flee list. In this show, they knock down old barns, collect the wood, and make “new” houses from it. While it’s great that they recycle, again it’s log cabin chic. They spend an inordinate amount of time admiring the “patina” of the old wood, nail marks and, frankly, wood rot. What they call patina I call “It needs to be sanded and stained or painted.” I suppose I have suburban tastes.

I’m also not fond of “Christina on the Coast.” I simply don’t care for her cookie-cutter, over-priced beach front homes.

The same could be said for the woman who renovates in “Bargain Mansions.” She takes run-down mansions that she buys for astoundingly low prices and almost always turns them into open concept houses that have been stripped of their uniqueness. For example, she seems to hate curved interior doorways, any type of pillar, or any room that could be remotely considered a library. While she may be gentrifying her corner of the Midwest, anyone who has to tell you the space they’ve renovated is beautiful lacks a certain amount of confidence – or else she thinks her customers aren’t smart enough to know beauty when they see it.

Also on my list of “I’ll pass” shows is “Pool Kings,” where the builders design enormous in-ground pools for people with more money than I’d know what to do with.

Unfortunately, all of their pools fall into only two categories: those with a “water feature” (Imagine that, a water feature in a pool!), which is their way of saying a waterfall and a waterslide beside it, or one with a lazy river around the edges of the pool. While it would be nice to have a pool (and space) for either of those, their lack of imagination means if you’ve seen two episodes, that’s pretty much it.

“Million Dollar Lottery Dream Homes” is just that. This guy, who seems to be more inked on every episode, shows Hollywood-style mansions to people who have just won millions in the lottery.

The guy really knows his clientele, and has good business sense. But people buying the houses are some of the pickiest people without the taste to go along with their millions. I’m simply not a bling-for-the-sake-of-bling type of person. While I’d love to win the lottery someday, I think I’d keep my middle-class house – well maybe I’d move into one of the Victorians in the middle of town – and use the money to travel.

It’s an interesting show to watch if you’ve binge-watched your entire DVD collection, but I couldn’t take a weekly diet of it.

The same is true of “The Vanilla Ice Project,” where the former rapper upgrades mansions in Florida. Apparently he’s a better construction manager than rapper. Still, I’m not a fan.

There are other shows I watch occasionally. “Good Bones,” with a red-headed mother and daughter team, I’ve stopped watching because the show has become more about their personal lives than about the renovations.

The mother is a left-over hippie – I suppose most would call her a “free spirit” – who tends toward flakiness. The daughter, when she’s not preoccupied with her family, appears to be the main designer. I can’t say many of their finished projects are to my liking, which is another reason I’ve stopped watching.

“Love It or List It” is a Canadian program that features a designer and a realtor. They work with couples, one of whom wants to move, the other who wants to stay in their house, which doesn’t fit their needs.

The designer tries to renovate the home to the level that would make them both want to stay. The realtor tries to find the perfect home to lure them from their current house.

There are a few maddening things about this show. One is that the homeowners haven’t done their homework, and have no clue how expensive – and sometimes impossible – it is to make the renovations they want, so that they never get everything they want. They also never take into account that the HVAC system may need to be replaced – which isn’t cheap – and it always does. Perhaps they should’ve consulted Mike Holmes first.

For his part, the realtor is so busy trying to win – and he’s a bit snotty about it – that he almost always only finds houses that are above the couple’s budget instead of telling them what things they won’t get in their price range.

Despite all of the setbacks that are very formulaic, the designer manages to get at least some of their wishes done – and very nicely. The thing is, it’s all top-end accouterments, complete with chandeliers in the bedrooms and walk-in closets the size of a child’s bedroom. If she used mid-grade materials, she could afford to do so much more.

The realtor always manages to find the perfect house, with most, if not all, of their requirements at a price that can at least be negotiated into their range.

What drives me crazy about the program is that at least 80 percent of the couples decide to love their home, often citing memories. No, she didn’t get much of what we wanted, but we have memories here.

Maybe I’m not that nostalgic, or perhaps I’ve never lived in a house that triggered that sense of nostalgia, but memories are what you keep a photo album – or wherever you store your pictures – for. And I can’t understand why they turn down the perfect house for that.

Given the opportunity to live in the perfect house at the right price, the only thing I’d have to say about the old place is, “List it!”

Lest you think I hate all of the programs, let me tell you about the ones I love. There are two in particular.

One is a guy who works mainly in California. He takes traditional houses – Spanish Colonial or Arts and Crafts styles – that have been badly renovated over the years, and restores them to their original glory. Yes, he adds modern touches the homeowners want, like updated kitchens with islands. But in the end, the homes are gorgeously restored.

The second is a guy who works in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and occasionally ventures into Chester or Montgomery County. He mainly restores the pre-Revolutionary war era stone houses still to be found in these Philadelphia suburbs.

He can often tell by looking that plaster might be hiding a stone wall. He sometimes discovers a staircase, a fireplace, or once in a while very old letters hidden behind the walls. He restores these homes to their former beauty. At times he finds new uses for old structures, like the time he turned an outbuilding that had once been a spring house into a wine cellar.

Of course, he works with people who appreciate the history of their homes. Not everyone in real life does.

About a 10-minute drive from our house is an old stone farmhouse – or it was. I would love to have bought a home like that. Unfortunately, the people who live there don’t share my love of stone house history. A few years after we moved into the area, the owners had the entire house done in vinyl siding. While the house may be warmer and easier to maintain, I’m sure they could have insulated it without ruining the integrity of the stone exterior.

But I digress.

“Rehab Addict” is another show with a mid-western woman who buys dilapidated houses in Minneapolis and Detroit, and restores them to their original style, but with a few modern touches.

She is a single mom working with a limited budget, so she carefully removes trim and cabinets when repairs are needed so she can reuse them. She, too, has a storage space where she keeps things from previous projects that didn’t fit with her renovations. None of the “rip it out and throw it out” mindset for her.

While she tends to use a lot of subway tile, it fits with the style of the houses in the area. When she’s finished, there’s a beautiful home in keeping with the intent of the original architect, and one less abandoned house in the area.

Having at least sampled all of these shows, you may think I’m now planning to renovate my house.

You would be wrong.

While, given the chance, I’d list my current home, looking around, other than new wallpaper in one or two rooms, the only changes I’d make are to put a colored glass backsplash in the kitchen, and quartz countertops to replace the Formica. The kitchen/dining room/conservatory is essentially open concept, so the house would sell easily if we ever decided to move. And everything is as much to our liking as we can have in this house.

But perhaps I have been watching just a bit too many renovation shows.

Adventures in London

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I love to travel. In fact, one of my greatest fears when considering retirement is not being able to afford to travel.

While I enjoy seeing the world with my husband, Blue Scream of Jeff (shameless blog plug), there are countries I want to explore repeatedly, and in detail that he isn’t interested in revisiting, namely, the British Isles.

He has nothing against Great Britain and Ireland except his concept of their weather. He’s been there, so he’d rather go elsewhere. And it’s not his heritage.

While many people I know consider London the ultimate British destination, for me it’s just a place I can get a direct flight to from the East Coast. Even traveling to Dublin a few years ago, the airline with the best price had a layover in London.(I know; it makes no sense to me, either.)

I don’t hate London. I’m just not a big city person. That said, I usually wind up spending at least a day in London before going to another destination. I did that a few years ago before taking the night train to Edinburgh for a week in Scotland.

I started my day touring churches I’d never visited. Since most weren’t open, I decided take in a bit of Dickens’ London.

No, I never expected it to look as it did in Dickens’ day. I simply wanted to see some of the places he’d mentioned in his novels. I couldn’t believe, in all of the times I’d been in London, I’d never been to Covent Garden or The Old Curiosity Shop.

Off I went to Covent Garden. A cobblestoned square, surrounded by buildings that were mostly restaurants, and an open air market, I began snapping pictures and looking everywhere but down.

Suddenly, as I walked across the square, my foot jolted down unexpectedly, and I fell.

What the hell? What just happened? My camera!

These were the thoughts that went through my head as I got off the ground.

The camera was a relatively new DSLR. I only hoped it hadn’t broken in the fall.

Looking around the ground, I noticed a curb I hadn’t seen. I had thought I was on the square, and hadn’t noticed this bizarre peninsula of slightly raised walkway jutting into the square. Maybe jetlag could be blamed for my not noticing it.

A young man who appeared to be a waiter from one of the outdoor restaurants dashed over to see if I was all right. I thought it was sweet that someone cared enough to ask, but I was embarrassed that it had happened at all.

I assured him I was fine, and had only hurt my pride and maybe bruised my knee.

He brought over a chair and called someone else over while he had me sit down, right in the middle of the square. Now I was embarrassed, imagining various diners wondering why that woman was just sitting in the middle of the square.

Enter a gorgeous young man half my age who looked like a young, slender Russell Crowe. He was the man the waiter had called over.

He was apparently a medic. He asked my name, where I was from, when I’d arrived, and what had happened. He wanted to know how I felt, whether or not I’d hit my head and whether or not I was hurt anywhere else.

I assured him I’d only bruised my knee. He offered me ice, but I declined. This was really much ado about nothing. I just wanted to be on my way, even though the scenery he was providing wasn’t hard to bear.

We chatted for a while, although I couldn’t imagine this young man was interested in my touring plans.

Of course, I realized he was only doing his job. He needed to make sure I really wasn’t injured. It wouldn’t do to have an injured American wandering around. Everyone knew how litigious we are.

What I didn’t realize until, while talking with a friend sometime later, was that his questions were a subtle attempt to assess if I’d had a stroke.

Me? Well, yes, I was of an age that it was possible, and I had fallen for seemingly no reason, although that wonky curb would have caught up anyone, especially someone who was jet-lagged.

Once I had spent the requisite amount of time for him to determine I hadn’t had a stroke, he let me go on my way.

Careful not to trip over any more curbs, I resumed my explorations.

While I didn’t get to all of the places I wanted to see, I’m sure I’ll be back again on my next trip to somewhere else.

No One Ever Told Me We Were Poor

Last Christmas, while I was visiting my brother, Rob, he recounted an interview he had with a recruiter from Cornell University.

I only vaguely remember someone coming to our house. I wasn’t allowed in the room, since it didn’t concern me, and it was something important to my brother’s future. At the time, he was going to be a doctor.

Rob was a gymnast in high school, and was hoping for an athletic scholarship so that he could afford the Ivy League university.

He told me how the man looked at him, at my parents, and at the furniture in our home, as if he were afraid he might catch something.

“It was humiliating,” he told me.

The recruiter told him there weren’t any gymnastic scholarships available, and that he’d never be able to afford the university. It was as if this stranger thought Rob was crazy for even applying – despite the fact that he was accepted academically.

Until that interview, Rob never knew we were poor.

Until that conversation last Christmas, I never knew we were poor growing up.

Weren’t we middle class? My dad wore a suit and tie to work, and carried a briefcase, just like the middle class dads on TV at the time.

We attended Catholic school, where our parents had to pay book fees each year for the workbooks that we wrote in, and in those days, monthly fees to ride the school bus to and from school. In high school, my parents paid tuition for my Catholic education.

I had a firm idea of poor. I had cousins who were poor.

We took very good care of our toys and bikes, as those cousins depended on many of our hand-me-down toys from Santa. I even knew of people who had to do without.

We lived in the suburbs – almost out in the country in those days – in our own home, with a front lawn, and a backyard complete with sandbox, swings, and a sliding board.

The poor relations lived in suburbs that were more like the city, and their yard had few of the things ours did.

Yes, I had hand-me-down clothes from those same cousins, just as the younger members of that family had from us. It was a huge family, mostly girls, and half of them were older than I was.

But as I saw it, and was encouraged to believe, the hand-me-downs were a supplement to my “regular” clothes. I had a dress coat and a play coat, and a cousin’s dress coats became my school coat. Such luxury! How many children could boast three winter coats at a time?

And while my actual middle-class friends sometimes couldn’t come outside to play in the snow because all of their trousers were in the wash, I had plenty, thanks to the bag of clothes from the cousins.

The extra clothes allowed me to develop my personal sense of style. Getting a bag was a time of great excitement to see what new things were waiting for me. If I didn’t like something, I could simply say it didn’t fit, and it went back to the cousins the next time we visited.

When I went shopping with my mother, she would pick out several items in her price range, and I was allowed to choose from these selections. There were plenty to choose from, so I never felt any lack. She even splurged and let me have a pair go-go boots when I was 10, my first pair of boots not meant for the snow, and something my wealthier friends didn’t have.

What I didn’t realize until I was a teen was that my parents didn’t get new coats or much in the way of new clothes other than as Christmas or birthday gifts while we were growing up.

The neighbors who showed off new coats and elegant clothes were the same ones who went on vacations, drove brand new cars and had air conditioning units in their bedroom windows. They were also the ones whose kids might run out of trousers, and couldn’t go out in the snow as a consequence. I actually felt sorry for their kids.

My “poor relations” weren’t the subject of pity, though. While it’s true my mother used the pity argument that they didn’t have as much as we did when trying to convince me to give up a beloved toy I no longer used, the fact that they had to do without was simply a given, since their family was so large. They were very cool people as far as I was concerned, and I loved visiting them.

I didn’t think of them as poor. They were simply the cousins I knew best.

I loved staying at their house. It didn’t bother me that I had to share a bed with a cousin. They had fun Friday nights where we had ice cream or potato chips – in the living room, while watching TV – something my parents didn’t do at our house.

And while I had a doll house that was the envy of friends and cousins alike, I knew I had it because my dad was handy at woodworking. He’d built it for me as a Christmas gift one year, and I have it still.

But my cousins had a wooden shoe holder that consisted of eight square cubbies. They would take all the shoes out, put in doll house furniture and people, and we’d use it as an apartment complex. I thought it was so cool.

The fact that I had things they didn’t or newer things wasn’t important. Lots of people had things I didn’t. That was life. Having something simply meant you had something cool you could share with others: Like my doll house or their shoe box apartment complex.

My cousins taught me how to play games I didn’t know. And what I think is the most important about them is that they are kind.

But I didn’t think of them as people to be pitied. And I certainly didn’t think of my own family as poor.

I had other cousins who lived in posher homes with fancy, albeit more sterile, accouterments. Those cousins couldn’t plop down just anywhere. And they certainly never had ice cream or potato chips in the living room! They had their designated area of existence and their parents had their evening cocktails.

When I went away to college, some people I met were horrified that my brothers shared a bedroom. What’s wrong with that?

Most people I knew shared a room. The only reason I had my own room was that I was the only girl. My brothers had their own beds, desks and closets. And we only used our rooms to sleep in or to do homework.

Personally, I hated having to put up with a roommate in the dorms because we spent so much more time in our dorm rooms. And some of the roommates I had were absolute jerks.

As an adult, I make more money than my parents did, even adjusting for inflation and changing times. But I went to college and they did not. I work in health care, which is a higher paying job than what my father did.

Does that make me look down on my parents?

It does not!

I have these things because my parents were determined to give their children opportunities that, as second generation Americans growing up in the Depression and living through World War II, they did not.

And some of the things I have that they didn’t are simply what has become the norm now. True, I generally don’t have to make do, as they did. And I am grateful.

It’s also true that I have some stuff I don’t really need. But I’ve inherited from my parents the ethic of not getting things just to accumulate them. While I may not need all of the things I have, I do use them.

There’s really no point in having stuff unless you can share it with others.

So, if I was poor growing up, I never felt it. Our parents gave us every reason to be thankful for what we did have, and taught us to recognize what was really important in life.

And unlike the la-de-bleedin’-da posh bastard from the Ivy League university, who looked down his nose at our old but clean and well-repaired furniture, as well as at my father’s salary, I’m not impressed with money and a horde of bling. I don’t care how much you make or where you live. If you’re not a decent human being, all the money in the world won’t make you worth knowing.