I’m pretty fucking annoyed. I was ready to be asleep more than an hour ago. Instead, my friend sits down and says he’s experiencing a certain kind of tension that he’s not entirely sure how to speak to. He manages to open with, “I’m not looking for a roommate situation.”
We’ve been working to renovate the house he bought intending to flip. By “we” I mean “I” have done 95% of it. Occasionally, he’s oscillated in thinking he might stay in it, or use it for some other thing like a business space. The way we’ve gone about fixing it up has evolved over time as well. He wanted it “as close to perfection” as possible, meaning things like mitered edges for the trim and deliberately painted accent walls. In practical terms, this has added hours of thought, labor, contradicting thought, supply buying, and general hiccups of stopping and going with regard to any one aspect of the project.
First, I built my house. I hired people to do work on it when I did not have the time or energy to do things. I’m learning that I’m not only capable of doing what it takes, but doing it better than people who confidently assert their abilities. The people I hired weren’t getting paid, maybe, many months from now after my house sold. The people I hired did every “hillbilly fix” available for the price point I could afford, which was almost as much, if not often more, as I made in an hour. Things that might’ve taken me days with the money and know-how took weeks. Supplies got wasted. Money functionally stolen. The only person I found who was reliable had, through no fault of his own, crippling health concerns.
You know a big reason you move to a field in the middle of nowhere? You’re not looking for a “roommate situation.” Back when I was getting started, this friend had to be practically harassed for months for an afternoon of his time to help me get two TVs transported from my van into my shed. I’ve been keeping myself to a 2 days on 1 off semi-schedule doing practically everything. If he puts in one row of floor, I put in 10. If he paints, he doesn’t paint. Before we ever touched the house, I brought over my yard equipment and we got to work weed whacking, hacking saplings, and generally cleaning up and pilling wood for fires. Nearly all of my tools are currently on site. I’ve literally painted everything. My power washer was used to clean up the front and back porches. My power washer which is as easy and lazy of a thing you could ever use to clean anything which sat out for weeks until I squeezed in washing the back porch after I had done what I could inside.
I’m currently sleeping next to a cat who likes to use its litter box as a hang-out spot. I’ve steam-cleaned this giant bean bag chair a dozen times. My back rolls the dice on what my spine will look like each morning. For weeks, we were huffing the dust, mold, cat litter, dander, their smoke, and the general dirt and debris from living around a ton of trees and gravel driveways. My sinuses were fucked until we got filters put on fans which aren’t ran continuously.
My house, which again, I built, paid people to build, and am still continuing to build, I like. It’s struggling with a heat issue for which I have a wood burner pending Amazon shipping. It’s not cheap to drive to town to work on this house, so I’ve been trying to donate plasma on the same days. I’ve had this longing desire to condense the nature of whatever task I am doing so I can just be done. It takes an incredible amount of time to paint, then floor, then trim, then go back to paint, then rip up some floor, then put down some floor, then go back and fuck with something that, were anyone being truly realistic about the nature of living in a construction site, we could solve quicker.
I appreciate anyone willing to come to me with whatever to make of their “tension.” He has told me that he could not do this without me. He took on this kid. He’s broke too and thinking about jobs and future political things. That’s all well and good. What annoys the fuck out of me is that, as with most things, I’ve asked for a schedule. I’ve asked for a more coherent time use. I’ve made the appeal to just get to work while he and the kid fuck off and do their own thing. Today, because I’m apparently here unexpectedly, it’s time to frame this as if I’m trying to live here?
Right now, I’m in this place for 25% of his cut after he pays back his parents. Ball-parking, that’s $8,000 if the place sells for at least as much as the neighbor’s house did without any renovations. How many hours do you think I’ve put into this property since August? How many tanks of gas? How much do you think my tools, their bits, blades, and batteries cost? It’s my truck that hauls his cabinets to the house and hauls the 20 contractor bags of trash away. If anything, by the time the house is actually done, I’ll be like a housing intern, cherishing the “experience” in lieu of what money I may have ever needed.
I try to be efficient not just because you obviously want to save time and money, but because I view it as a moral issue. If you don’t have to waste, why choose to? I don’t take my health, the working nature of my tools or truck, or the weather for granted. If you are going to consider your comfort at a level higher than what you’ve obligated yourself to complete, what am I doing functionally positioning myself to work in service to your comfort? In theory, not in any tangible practical reality, his connections could help spur on the counseling business. Right now, we spend considerably more time walking the dog, theorizing about the future, and doing something tangential to food.
I wash the dishes. I pick up the constant stream of trash. I sweep up the cat litter. I walk the dog when he’s gone for long portions of the day. I keep the lists of the supplies we need. I keep my tools jammed in my truck or at the ready. I mold to fit every little particular thing that comes up that interrupts the flow of work. You don’t like a cold garage? Fine, we’ll occupy one of the few outlets we’re constantly using for a heater. You don’t want to make the living room your bedroom while we work? Fine. We’ll do one room at a time, one aspect at a time, repeat everything we’ve done, redirty, repaint, re-find all of the tools we used last time. Why not? It’s not like I have money I desperately need riding on the sale of this place or anything.
It’s always going to be an imperfect balance. There’s no real way to measure my contribution to what he may or may not bring to getting the counseling running. What I pick up here will inevitably help me in any house I wish to flip in the future. I’ve been a touch more comfortable, in not freezing to death, by crashing on this bean bag chair in a house with heat. It still feels dirty and disingenuous to come to me like I haven’t been bending over backwards and tempering my “let’s just get this fucking shit done” attitude this entire fucking time while I listen to them cough up weed smoke. You know what I just did on my “day off” of either hanging and waiting or working on the house? Dug 9 footers and laid the sub-floor for another home extension. It took me 3 hours. I also built a housing for my truck box before the sun set. Think another room couldn’t have been painted or a floor installed in the same amount of time?
When he first bought the place, before all the things were moved in, before the kid was fostered, and before we’d generally sit in this rut of “when I feel like it” mode of getting anything done, there was a TV, my tools, and me. I didn’t even have counseling things to really fuck with. I could have ripped up the whole floor, not just the living room, and had that shit dumped or burnt. I could have painted the ceilings without crashing into furniture. I could have installed the floor without the kid coming out and picking up tools and commenting on shit. Instead? I’m here almost 4 months later, a third of the way done, and being mildly chastised for…overstaying my welcome? I don’t need to be here. It will not get done without me. I’m, again, trying to sincerely work and invest and demonstrate my value through work and communication. I’m eliciting…discomfort. I’m also getting this message as I’m wishing to fall asleep, now kicking off an hour of head racing on top of things.
Right before this chat, we just finished eating tacos prepared with my SNAP money, along with the other items thrown on the tab. I’m “happy” to cover things like that. We share food, resources, yada yada as friends do. You’re not looking for a roommate’s tacos though, right?
He runs through his schedule, and we decided tentatively to have me work tomorrow on things he was not prepared to do, then not again until next week, for 5 days, alone, with him and the foster kid gone for the holidays. It’s all I could ever ask for, to be left alone to just get shit done. That will add to the absurdity though. While family’s are gathering and Christmas vacationing, I’ll be alone at his house doing his renovations, for my small stake, in the hopes I can bring more peace to my mind about the time it has taken and the “discomforting” barriers to progress.
You know what happens when you switch between tasks on a round instead of doing them all at once? You get floor and wood dust/confetti landing on your paint supplies. You’re spending 20 minutes rearranging the garage. You’re miscounting or misremembering how much you needed for something to complete the task because you only calculated half of what you had left to do.
I’m tired of bitching. I’m tired of being subject to how “uncomfortable” it is to be responsible for what you signed up for. At least he brought it to me, and at least I can start reorienting myself around staying the fuck away until perhaps the drama of my absence tempers the inclination to say anything more than your schedule, plans, and “thank you.”
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