Posted November 30, 2008

Thanksgiving is over and, as I look back on our house, full of family and friends raising their glasses in joyful merriment, I am overcome by a feeling I've had so many times before.

Never again.

At our house, the tradition of family and friends getting together, giving thanks, exchanging gifts and rekindling old feuds is second only to our tradition of getting the house ready to receive visitors.

Or, as it is known in our family, the annual calling of the contractor.

Somehow, between the last Thanksgiving, when everyone ooo'ed and ahh'ed at how lovely our home looked, and the next one, it becomes clear to my wife that our once-lovely home is now a blight on the neighborhood, and the only thing that will save it is an extreme makeover.

(I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, "What's the problem, Jay? According to many cable television shows, a complete makeover takes only thirty minutes and costs $2.37 less than your budget. Stop being such a crybaby." This is precisely the reason I never publish my wife's email address. First of all, she does not need any further encouragement. Second of all, some of those projects take as much as an hour.)

The important thing to know about any home remodeling project is that a reliable contractor will not even consider starting work without a set of detailed plans.

In the contracting business, these are frequently referred to as humorous pieces of short fiction created for the amusement of the contractor's drinking buddies.

FIRST CONTRACTOR: Ho, ho, that's a funny one.

SECOND CONTRACTOR: Do they seriously think that's what their new family room will look like?

FIRST CONTRACTOR: They're already picking out colors for the walls.

THIRD CONTRACTOR: They expect walls?

SECOND CONTRACTOR: On that budget?

Unlike homeowners, contractors quickly learn the fundamental laws of remodeling.(They do this at contracting school, which is why they spend thousands of dollars on tuition for things they could otherwise find in free library books.) These laws---and by presenting them here I am running the risk of being blacklisted by the contractors union so I will never be able to remodel my home before Thanksgiving again---are as follows.

The first law is people change their minds.

I will repeat that. People change their minds. (This is in case the contractors in charge of blacklisting were busy doing important contracting things, like supervising each other.)

Changing your mind after the detailed plans have been prepared is a license for the contractor to print money, although he does not have to do that because he will get the money from you.

Apparently, no matter how small the change, whatever you now want will cost you plenty.

YOU: But we can't be a week late. Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow.

CONTRACTOR: You wanted the change. Everything was going according to schedule.

YOU: How can NOT painting the ceiling cost me $800 and a week's delay?

CONTRACTOR: I got guys not doing anything. Somebody's gotta pay for that.

The second law (oh, darn, I'm risking that pesky blacklisting again) is that no matter how careful the plan, something will go wrong. Whatever it is, it will be your fault.

CONTRACTOR: ...and $4000 to repair the pipes.

YOU: There was nothing wrong with the plumbing until you cut the pipes in two.

CONTRACTOR: Whoever built this house put the plumbing in the wrong place.

YOU: In a bathroom wall? Behind the sink?

CONTRACTOR: Yeah, well, people do some weird things, you know?

The third law (someone might almost think I want to be blacklisted) is that the universe is expanding. At first you might expect that astrophysics has very little to do with home remodeling, but, ha, ha, nothing could be further from the truth.

YOU: I thought you measured for the book case so it would stretch from one side of the room to the other.

CONTRACTOR: It's an architectural touch.

YOU: A two-foot gap? What happened? Did the room get bigger overnight?

CONTRACTOR: Don't blame me. Blame Stephen Hawking.

Thanks to these fundamental laws you can be sure any remodeling project will be everything you expected, along with several thousand things you didn't expect, mostly things with little pictures of George Washington on them.

Yet, somehow, our projects always get completed the night before Thanksgiving, usually because I am willing to stop crying long enough to sign an authorization for overtime which, after all these years, my contractor carries, completely filled out, in the breast pocket of his Armani work shirt.

Then, as our friends and family sit down to a traditional Thanksgiving meal, our contractor returns home and gives thanks for his Thanksgiving turkey, the one who, every year, pays for the feast his wife prepares.

©2008 Jay Douglas