Home Renovation and Eternity

I now know why construction workers smell like construction workers. In an effort to preserve my clothing I purchased a set of terribly unfashionable builder’s wear - a denim-like jacket and awful pants that rise to the waist where they clinch in with a boa-like grip. I am prepared to suffer the embarrassment of bad couture, but was unprepared for the bad odour. They look like denim, but they are not denim. I think they are made from recycled plastic bags. 

 

I know there are women who pay thousands to go off to a spa and have some sleek creature mummify them in saran wrap then encase them in a plastic suit and force them to run around like crazy Tellytubbies. 

My mother actually did this. It is quite one thing to do this by choice, but when one is heavily involved in DIY a little breathability wouldn’t go amiss. They should make these things out of the stuff climbers wear… Gore-tex?

Sadly, I am not like the women in Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction. I don’t wield an orbital sander in a manner that is erotic. I have also discovered that Daisy Dukes don’t provide a great deal of protection from paint, sparks and all the other dangers that lurk. 

I have a very interesting looking Hazmat facemask that makes me feel like a CDC agent, but has now clogged with so much paint that it provides little or no oxygen. With the plastic suit and the lack of oxygen I soon resemble a cast member from The Walking Dead.

So, why am I doing something that patently does not come naturally to me? Good question. After my beloved husband fired no less than 3 contractors for total ineptitude, he decided we could do it better ourselves. Blithely I assumed we meant the Royal we, but he didn’t, he meant we as in him and me. HAH!

The not-so-Royal-we has now been extended to include Small boy aged 9, Small boy aged 6 and Small girl aged 5. All right I extended it first and co-opted them into helping paint during the week in hope of a day off this weekend. The problem with child labour is that the parent with the most interesting offering get dibs on the help. Father got the skilled labour of the boys while I got the unskilled labour of Small girl aged 5 to help me clean and polish her grandmother’s Merc.

The sad thing is that DIY and home renovation is a lot like eternity. My life stretches ahead of me – endless weekends of painting, sanding, hammering, sawing, reupholstering and so on. Once you have realised you can do it yourself, you resent paying someone else to do it for you. 

Strangely this does not extend to other areas like vacuuming and house cleaning, where I am perfectly content to pay someone else to hide the chaos that I leave in my wake.