Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 11, 1993 TAG: 9303100249
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE PERKS OF HOME OWNERSHIP
They are starting to recognize us at hardware stores all across the Roanoke Valley.We're the couple that shows up three, sometimes four times per Saturday. Always confused, often with items to return.
Like last weekend's project, for instance, the one that started out so simple, so unintimidating. We wanted to paint the smallest room in our house, the bathroom.
As is typical of our initial hardware trips, the Saturday Morning Trips, we began confidently. We browsed among the sink fixtures and paint solvents as if we'd been doing it for years.
We pointed to the ceramic tiles and nodded, planning our future kitchen counter top, the colors we'll use, the eye-catching patterns we'll create. We threw the word "grout" around like we knew how to spread it.
We said things to each other like, "Look, honey, there's a sale on STEEL WOOL!" And then we put some in our cart, making us feel especially skilled and craftsmanlike.
So it went Saturday as we eased our way over to the paint selections, where we pored over those little strips of color with fingernail-polish names like "dinner mint" and "blithe spirit," and after careful deliberation chose "foliage" and "smoked salmon" - designer-speak for your basic green and peach.
Let me just stop right now and warn: This is the only FUN part of the painting experience.
Once our colors were chosen, it was all uphill from there, including: not one, but two return trips to the customer-service desk later in the day to exchange incorrect items; and yet another trip to a different, nearby hardware store for wood putty.
And we still don't have a paint scraper. Or paint on the walls.
Indeed, we've definitely wet our feet in the waters of homeownership/home improvement. And frankly, we've found it to be a bit nippy out here (particularly if your furnace is as old as ours, but that's another story).
So for those of you about to take the plunge, for those of you who, like us, believed all those people who said it's "cheaper to own than to rent," here's what we've learned to so far:
The hardware store is your friend; the people who work there your very saviors. For one thing, you can buy anything at a hardware store. Things I didn't think you could buy anywhere the hardware store will sell you - even in cases, if you like - items such as parts of lamps, parts of light switches, parts of parts of lamps and light switches.
If you look dumb enough, the workers will even tell you how to fix things. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to perfect The New Homeowner Look, which should range somewhere between the overwhelmed but excited look of a kid in a candy store and the excited but scared-to-death look of a kid at his first Megadeath concert.
The important thing to remember here is: You are a kid. When it comes to matters of hardware, always defer to the person with the name tag (typically: "Chuck"), the guy who not only knows where every little switch, nut and pipe is, he also knows how to use them.
Nothing is as easy as it looks; one project begets another. We had no idea it would take so long to prep our bathroom for painting, mainly because we didn't know about the GAPING HOLE hovering just above the tiny crack in the ceiling. Which brings us to:
Plaster and putty - they, too, are your friends. Although I can't help but think about the 10-year-old Honda Civic I drove for a couple months in college . . . until I found out the rusted-out bottom had been redone in Bondo and might fall out from under me at any minute.
I'm not sure what that little parable has to do with plastering and puttying all the holes, cracks and foundation breaks in your house, but somehow it seems apt.
Like your mothers and fathers before you, learn to cuss at appropriate times. There are still certain unprintable words I can't hear without thinking of my mom hunched over on all fours, re-lighting the pilot light on our old dryer with a match rubberbanded to the end of a long stick.
I think of her sage remarks every time our furnace goes off in 20-degree weather, every time another weekend project stretches into a monthlong maze of projects, each one triggered by the other like dominoes.
Just, whatever you do, don't dwell on THAT REALLY NICE HOUSE you wanted to buy, but your husband said cost too much. Don't even think about its new furnace, or its new roof, or the impeccable renovation work that had already been done, especially the fact that its windows had not been painted shut in a fast and furious move to sell and get out some kinda quick.
Really, what's the use?
If you had bought that really nice house, you'd be so straddled with mortgage payments you wouldn't have any money leftover to spend every Saturday at Lowe's.
Macy Beth Macy, a features department staff writer, is not bitter about her new house. Really. Her column runs on Thursdays.