38) The Ship-Show*

It was strange to you now because although you had ‘finish’ dates in mind for the basement… and they changed frequently… you never really imagined the basement being finished.

Even now when you and David were getting ready to roll the paint, you didn’t feel that much closer to when you started. It was a strange feeling… you wondered if it was internalized self doubt or just finally starting to realize that this project would NEVER be done.

Not the basement per se. The basement would eventually be done… mostly… but you were now acutely aware of something that although you ‘knew’ on day one… you didn’t really ‘know, know.’

Much like one might have an idea as to what it would be like to parent children, one really had no fucking clue until they were deep in the trenches. And this whole renovation felt very much the same.

You knew… but you also had no fucking clue. Even now… nearly eight months in and you were still feeling relatively clueless.

There was ALWAYS something to be done… or something that would need to be done at some juncture in time. There was never going to be that: everything is done and ready to go moment like what you’d see on a reality show where the homeowners leave town for a week then don blindfolds and dramatically turn towards their fully renovated home before the host would count down… “3… 2… 1…!” The blindfolds would come off and everyone would exclaim, “Oh wow… oh my god… I love it…” and inevitably someone would start crying and the host would say, “But wait! There’s more… let me show you inside!” To which everyone would clamber to the front door and the “wows” would be repeated upon entry… “Oh wow… oh my god… I love it…’

“The Big Reveal…” that’s what they called it.

This however was no reality show. It was just plain old fucking reality. And the reality was… this place would NEVER be done. Ever.

Period.

What would a big reveal cost? The kind where you’d leave for a week… in this case probably at least six months, and you’d come home to a fully restored and repaired church…?

“And if you come this way Ms LeVesque… you’ll see that not only did we fix the impossible ceiling leak in the sanctuary… but we put on a whole new roof!”

That’d be close to $150k if not more. That was more than you paid for your first home.

You regularly thanked your lucky stars that even though the roof sucked, you probably had at least another 20 years left on her.

“Now Ms LeVesque… I don’t know if you noticed this yet… but we put in radiant heat flooring in the sanctuary… look at those gorgeous floors! No more subfloors!” You would start crying at this point… you were definitely the cryer.

You had priced that out several months ago… radiant heat flooring for the sanctuary. Not even the labor… just the materials… of course it would be another DIY job… and then you laughed… and laughed… and laughed… and laughed again… never fucking happening. Seventy Five Fucking Thousand Dollars… just to buy the flooring materials…. And that didn’t even include the actual floor…. That was at least another $30-$75k depending upon what you chose. HA!

“Oh but Ms LeVesque… we’re not through yet… we put in all new windows… Anderson windows… no expense was spared… as well as central AC!”

You hadn’t even bothered pricing that shit out.

Welp… a gal could dream. Reality though was that this church would need a full time team of dedicated handy-people working indefinitely to not only restore, but to keep this place up. And speaking of dreams… that was definitely one of them. None of this even addressed the issue of cost.

You found it all funny though; oddly enough you weren’t at all cynical about any of it. You found it all pretty comical. Which you found interesting in and of itself considering that cynicism seemed to course more powerfully through your veins with each revolution you made around the sun. Maybe it was because this was the first thing outside of painting for a living, that you had ever really chosen on your own… of your own accord… aside from your husband… a co-conspirator to all of this crazy….

This was YOUR nut house… errr church. You did sign up for this. These were your fucking monkeys… and you were the ringmaster in this batshit nuts, crazy ass circus.

Cue the clown car!

And yet there was something satisfying about that. Lunacy and all. This was your shit-show. You were Captain Kirk… this was your Enterprise… even if maybe sometimes you felt more like Captain Phillips on the Maersk Alabama… when the bees, and the leaks, and the bats… always the fucking bats… seized the ship. Maybe even when you weren’t in control… you still took some solace in knowing that this was still your ship to command… even if the pirates did have a gun to your temple… You were a good captain… and you would ride this bitch down to the bottom of the sea with a huge fucking grin on your face if that’s what it came to.

Or… maybe you had just inhaled way too many paint strippers at this point.

Regardless… you were immersed in this journey and you felt a full sense of duty… a fulfilling sense of duty… that kept you stationed at the helm of your proverbial ship-show… You owed it to yourself to keep up the never ending navigation… so long as this ship was in your command, it was up to you to keep her afloat, to steer clear of icebergs… to ward off pillagers…

“Did you see the bees are back?” David said, jarring you out of your cruising captain fantasy world.

“What did you just say???”

“I said… did you see that the fucking bees are back?”

“You’re kidding me right?”

“You really think I would joke about that?”

“No. I guess not… because that would be really fucked up if you did.”

“It wouldn’t be funny either.”

“We paid that guy a small fucking fortune to get rid of them…”

“And I sealed up the hive entrance… really, really, really well…”

You sighed deeply, “Put that shit on a to do list somewhere I guess (what else could you do?): TAKE CARE OF BEES… AGAIN…”

“Which one? Which list should I add it to…? We’ve got a list of lists going at this point…”

And we did…

ICEBERG DEAD AHEAD!

******************************************************************************

There were finally some breaks in the weather, little teases of spring… 74 degrees one day and then 30 the next. You had forgotten about the crazy weather patterns of the NorthEast. Mother nature was doing her due diligence in reminding you. You both took advantage of the nice days peppered in to the lingering winter.

“I’m thinking that we could turn all this soil in the next few weeks…” you said pointing to one of the huge eight planter beds in the yard. It was sunny and warm out, “I was digging in the garden a little bit and unlike the rest of the yard, this was really easy to dig through…. Even with my arm like it is”

“Yeah, I think that will be nice to get the garden going… I’m really looking forward to that…”

“Me too…”

You saw it out of the corner of your eye… a large insect of some sort, you assumed a fly… you couldn’t quite tell if it had landed on your shoulder or your head and just as you reached out to swat it away…

“Careful!” David warned you, “There’s a bee on you.”

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” You darted from where you were standing… there really was no need to be afraid of them… the bees, yet your reptilian brain always won out when it came to bugs… you were running… especially if they stung or looked especially gross.

When your senses caught up to your knee jerk reaction and you stopped running and flailing your arms you turned to David, who stood in the center of the yard…

“Speaking of bees… look at that shit…” he said pointing to where the massive hive had been, where he had hastily and temporarily sealed all of the gaps in the soffit… a mad dash to beat the impending winter.

You had to watch very carefully on account of the old hive being so far off the ground, but there they were, a handful of bees buzzing about the old hive entrance. Every so often one would land on the soffit and begin crawling across the wood before disappearing into what you could only imagine was an overlooked gap.

“Un-fucking-real…” you sighed.

“I wish it weren’t real…”

“So I guess we’ll figure that out then?”

“I mean what else are we gonna do?”

And just like that, you spun the wheel… the ship slowly creaked and groaned, turned with the new angle of her rudder… another deviation from your strategically plotted course. How far off your intended route you’d venture… you were beginning to realize, wasn’t really up to you. You’d get there when you got there… and at this point, who even knew where the fuck ‘where’ was…

*Recreation of the bees… and me seeing them…

Somehow the bees found a way in… yeah I know… doesn’t look great (yet) but the basement took priority here lol! The bees were coming in right where the downspout comes off the gutter. Good thing it’s not too hard to get to (sarcasm there - it’s almost 40’ up off the ground).

Left to right: view of the north side of the church from the back of the yard. David’s workshop and the garden beds we need to turn so we can start our vegetable garden. Up close photo of where the bees are going… again.

I get it… I’m not going to kid myself here and say that the North side of the church is looking tip top… because let’s be honest… it’s not. We are getting there though; slowly but surely… and also if you guessed that there are some stories involved here… well… you wouldn’t be wrong.

When it came time to grade the back yard and dig up the foundation we were really racing mother nature. Not in the literal sense… obviously… because what the fuck would that even look like… but and I know that this is going to come as a major shock to any and all who read this… BUT… we underestimated the scope and length of time it would take for our outdoor projects. I know, I know… there’s an emerging pattern for sure.

I had never used an excavator before. I was basically winging it. Whole lot of winging it going on here. Perhaps another pattern you may have recognized? David had been certified and trained on both but it had been just about a decade before he had fired either one up. So we both got to learn… and re-learn here. And we didn’t have the luxury of time or dilly dallying… it was only a matter of time at that point before we got our first hard freeze and then work would be done… wherever we were at that point. So there was definitely the added stress of racing the season’s end. The last thing I wanted was to have dug up the entire foundation only to have everything freeze before we could back fill it… All I could picture was a trench filling with snow which would eventually melt and probably wind up in our kitchen.

My other fear and I know I mentioned this earlier, was that I was going to smack the excavator’s bucket into the church and somehow knock the entire building over. One of the things I used to love doing when the kids were little and we lived in our old neighborhood back in Florida was watching demo teams tear down old and dilapidated homes. They’d get a big excavator in there and just a few whacks and chomps with that big bucket thing… I don’t know what the fuck they’re called… doesn’t matter honestly… the house would be torn to absolute shreds. The kids loved seeing that shit… and honestly watching a house get demoed was so much better than the garbage truck videos that they loved to watch on YouTube.

What’s that? You have no idea what I’m talking about? Well, well, well… you my friend are in for a treat. If you go to YouTube and search “garbage truck videos” you will get a litany of videos with well… you guessed it… nothing but garbage trucks picking up garbage cans. There are front loader trucks, side loader, rear loader. Did you know that they even make pink fucking garbage trucks? I do… because I have probably watched 8,947,321 hours of garbage truck videos. And these videos aren’t to music or anything like that… just the raw dogging sound of the truck’s engine and the cans getting picked up… some beeping in there too.

So yeah… now you know and like I said, the house demos beat the absolute hell out of the garbage trucks. But yeah anyway I always found it equally parts fascinating and horrifying how easily a home could just be annihilated by an excavator and a guy knocking back fucking Red Bulls like his life depended on it.

Which meant that silly me… I had a bit of trepidation with the whole bucket excavator thing. All I kept thinking was that I was going to slam that bucket into the side of the church and rip through it, the excavator falling into the basement or better yet, the entire church splitting in two before coming down in a cascade of bricks and wood… cue Steve Urkle voice: Did I do that?

Now you’re probably guessing that most definitely didn’t happen; on account of both the above pictures and common sense… and you’re correct. What did happen though is that the first time I accidentally and inadvertantly slammed the bucket into the side of the church, that excavator fucking rocked. The church didn’t budge, the excavator heaved and shook and my teeth clenched like they’ve probably never clenched before… aside from the kids stomping on the fucking stairs… but yeah… no damage. Everything was a-ok… even the bucket.

Here’s a fun fact though… window casings are not nearly as hardy as three feet of solid stone. I know… who woulda’ thunk? And I know this not only on account of common sense, but also on account of first hand experience. Jackie and I had been working on the basement, chiseling the plaster off the walls and David was outside on the skid steer moving some of the giant tomb like looking stones we found (still no clue what those were all about) and unfortunately, as unfortunate things sometimes happen, there was a massive THWAUMP followed by a tirade of the most foul language one could even begin to imagine (so out of character… I know) and Jackie and I both looked at each other and said, not even out loud… but rather with our eyes, “Not today Satan,” and we kept chiseling.

Turns out that one of the rocks slipped from the skid steer and slammed into one of the window casings… miraculously the window itself was spared; we still don’t even know how in the fuck we got that lucky, but the frame got pretty badly damaged. So damaged in fact that we were able to see and put our arm through the giant hole that was created in its damaged wake.

David was seething fucking angry at himself. I didn’t say a word. What had to be said that a giant gaping hole in the wall isn’t already saying? Besides, I could have just as easily slammed the excavator’s bucket through a window… no one is getting all judgy here… but the gaping hole had to be dealt with. Pretty pronto. And also the foundation needed to be water proofed and back filled, also lickety fucking split. So… spray foam the fuck it was and David filled the giant hole in the window casings with spray foam until we could come back to it at a later date. Still haven’t gotten there which is fine… but… that’s why you’re seeing a massive gob of spray foam by the window. No, we have no intention of leaving it that way and it looks all kinds of ugly but it beats the hell out of the hole, which god only knows would have made its way through there (even more bats if I had to take a wild guess).

What else… ah yes, the boarded up windows. Those are cute right? All the rage I’m hearing. Luckily we personally had nothing to do with that. You wouldn’t know it but we actually did replace a bunch of the sanctuary windows over the summer during a lull in the basement project; or more accurately as a certified psychiatrist might explain it: an ADHD sidequest. Unfortunately we didn’t have all of the windows needed… 16 are still MIA. We were told (and found the photos to prove it) that a fine entrepenuer (fucking opportunist scavenger imho) bought the church, tore out all of the stained glass, replaced the glass with the worst windows ever or boards… and then sold the church after making an insane amount of money. I’m not even religious and yet I find that pretty sacrilege tbh… but whatever, that ship has come and went. The boards still linger. I guess the silver lining here is that I’d guess the stained glass windows were stationary (probably not but I’m just trying to make myself feel better about the loss) and at some point we can put in some windows that actually open and close. That will be nice.

The spray foamed gutters… well that’s a roofing issue turned problem. The roof job was so shoddy that the gutters weren’t installed correctly (nor were they the correct size or amount of gutters needed either) and as a result the gutters continually overflowed and leaked into the wood… causing tons of damage… unless you’re a bee and in that case, they opened up quite the real estate opportunity. So again, until we could deal with the problem of rotting wood correctly… spray foam it was.

All in all there’s a whole ton of work to be done in the side yard and to the actual church’s exterior. Right now she’s not looking her best aesthetic self, but we’re getting there. I’d give you a time frame on when she might be back to her full splendor, but I think among other things, we’ve long since established that I kind of suck at estimating project duration, so let’s just say that she’ll be done (but never fully done) at a date yet to be determined… because that’s honestly the best I got.