2002-09-03 - 10:54 p.m.
"You are HERE."
My brother Mike unrolls blueprints and points to the lines indicating a doorway between the garage and the kitchen. We are standing in the new, wooden shell of a house he is building, looking through the framed walls. He shows me pictures first, of the beginning phases: surveying, excavation, foundation, framing. Then he takes me on the deluxe tour, filling in the unfinished rooms with words. A two-storey foyer here where the roof is still open to sky. The kitchen island sits there, by the pencil lines. At the top of the temporary stairs, a huge master suite with corner Jacuzzi. He has planned and thought through every detail, and the house is going to be beautiful. It sits on a large lot in a quietly upscale neighborhood. And hopefully someone will want to pay 325,000 dollars for it.
I am amazed and overwhelmed at what goes into building a house. You have to get permits and temporary electrical power, and arrange to connect to the water and sewer systems. The house must be situated a certain number of feet from your property line and from the street and from a tree. A different company or crew must be called in for each unique operation. The basement wall guys are different from the basement floor guys, and still another crew does the waterproof coating on the basement walls. Plumbers lay down the main pipes that go under the floor, not to be confused with the plumbers that will install the sinks. All this before you even get above ground....
My brother speaks expertly about all these processes. He was familiar with carpentry from having worked on a construction crew when he was in college, but in the months since he decided to become an independent contractor, he has really done his homework. This is his first house, and if all goes well it will be the first of many. I have never seen him so animated and happy, as he talks about the house, explaining his decisions, examining every detail as we walk around. It is as though he has finally found what he was meant to do, after so many years of trying to pursue careers that didn't really matter to him.
A year ago, his health almost broken by job stress, he quit his job and started the risky process of trying to figure out what he could do with the rest of his life. At the age of forty, he was not willing to start climbing yet another corporate ladder, with no guarantee that it would be less inhumane or more satisfying. And he had some injuries to his joints (knees and elbows) that made certain kinds of work impossible, such as intensive keyboard pounding or lots of standing. At the end of a long time of looking around and soul searching, he decided to do a brave thing. Probably one of the bravest things anyone I know has ever done. Mortgaging everything he had, he borrowed all the money he could possibly get his hands on, and set out to build a house. He went around and talked to everyone who was in the construction business, and got names of other people to talk to, and talked to them. He convinced suppliers and crews to work with him. He researched neighborhoods and housing values and styles and trends. And he is making it happen.
The house is still several months from completion, and there is much more to do. More rain delays possible, more specialized crews to coordinate. And then it will have to sell. The housing market will have to stay brisk, no drops in the economy. There are so many risks in this business, and yet he seems happier, even to be lying awake at night, mulling over a thousand little concerns about the house, than he was in an office job. How much better to create something real than just to spend your days bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon. He said "I don't want to create something that exists only on paper. If someone wants to know what I've done, I can say 'I'll drive you by my resume.'"
Over the weekend I also saw another house in a state of construction, or maybe I should say deconstruction. My son Cary and his friend John have undertaken to refurbish/repair a rundown house and then sell it for a profit. They are lucky enough to form a partnership with someone else who is putting up all the cash for this endeavor so they at least are not taking a big financial risk. But, oh, the work they have ahead of them! The house is a nice, spacious four bedroom ranch in a nearby suburb..... with all the walls knocked out. Even the bathroom is open. The former owner had some vague notion about remodeling it, but after tearing down the walls, didn't know what to do. And so they just lived in it all filthy and torn up for several years, and then moved. We looked around in the house, already seeming cleaner after their first day's work, and wondered how anyone could live in such bizarre conditions. You just never know about people. They mowed their yard. They planted flowers. I suspect that the neighbors across the street might never have known that they were living across from people with no bathroom walls.
But all that is about to change, and the guys certainly have their work cut out for them. I'm amazed at their energy and ability to tackle anything. Cary is one of those people who just lives to get a lot accomplished. Not that he can't relax and have a good time, but on an average day he does things like run four miles before work, and mow the lawn on his lunch hour. If anybody can handle it he can. But they have a lot at stake, too. They have to turn the house around quickly because every month they hold it before selling it decreases their profits. So they will be spending all of their nights and weekends for the next two months sawing and drilling and sanding and painting and the hundred other things that will turn this shell back into a home. And they have hopes, too, that this will be the first of many, and that one day they will be working for themselves in the housing business instead of in the corporate world.
Does success really, as they always say, come to those who work hard for it? Is it for those who answer the door when opportunity knocks, who are out there getting the worm at five a.m., who say "I think I can, I think I can?" Or is it random: dumb luck, right-place-right-time, the stars lining up? Are we, as I sometimes fear, really just waiting for the pigeons of success to fly over and crap on our heads?
Sometimes I wish life was like the movies: the music would come up, and after a few representative vignettes of hammering and sawing and painting, everything would magically be done. The good guys are racing against the clock and they finally win, and everyone throws their hats in the air. In the movies it all works out. And I want so badly to see it all work out for Mike and for Cary and John. I'm rooting for the good guys, hard work, and hats in the air. But if we happen to attract a pigeon or two, I'll take it.
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