Off the Grid: When gratitude is 20 swinging hammers
I’ve worked with a number of unreliable resources in my day: gluten-free baking flours, feminine hygiene products and car salespeople to name a few. Nothing has quite prepared me for the capricious Subcontractor Work Calendar. It is apparently created by an algorithm involving diet Red Bull, phases of the moon, the size of tread on truck tires, and the ratio between their overcommitted hours and IBS flareups.
In short, they might work, though they aren’t real sure when. A chimichanga could change it all.
“I don’t know if I’m showing up tomorrow,” one said. “That’s why I work for myself! I don’t answer to nobody.”
This declaration of independence directly precedes a request for money, of course. But I’m no fool. I pay in donuts-by-the-dozen until the job is done.
As my husband and I cajole, encourage, question and pastry-bribe the crew toward our next inspection date, the work seems to slow. Trusses are delayed by weeks. A forklift rental sits in the driveway bleeding money from a build budget like a wound that won’t heal. I notice a drastic increase in the number of gray hairs sprouting from my scalp.
There’s no roof. Snow is coming. Though it’s a sunny Wednesday, the moon is crescent, so I can’t figure out of that means framers are going to show up or if I need to purchase a case of Mountain Dew first.
Charlie decides he’s going to have a little work party on a Saturday. He asks a couple of guys from work to come and sends a message to a few friends. So do I, with a promise of pizza and beverage of choice so long as it doesn’t have corn syrup solids or relegate anyone to a step ladder. By midweek, my husband has replaced half his sleep hours with resource planning hours.
This is, of course, his job as a construction project manager. It’s the delight he takes in it that strikes me as a kind of mania – like artists who stay up all night creating masterpieces. He becomes unreachable, eyes glossed over. An inquiry as to dinner requests inevitably turns into a discussion about venting types and soffit. He is a possessed man. I am lovestruck because I just happen to be desperately in need of a man who knows how to build a house.
On a frosty Saturday morning at the end of a dirt road, a veritable village of humans answered to the call. The cul-de-sac filled up with pickup trucks and the entire catalogue of Carhartt waltzed through the skeleton of our future home. They’ve brought tool belts, gloves, willingness and the kind of generosity that becomes exponential in groups.
There are neighbors, our mortgage guy, my bike mechanic. They put their children to work. There are dads from the school, my stepbrother from California who found himself a Sandpoint girlfriend. He brings her. Her work ethic and dark humor make her an immediate family member. By midday, there are nearly 20 people crawling over rafters, up ladders, through walls. Charlie bounces from group to group issuing work orders.
There is so much laughing, it’s hard to tell we’re working. The snack table turns into an explosion of chips, drinks and cold pizza that slowly disappears. The scrap lumber pile shrinks by use and fire. The house takes shape and begins to resemble a vision we had months ago. We walk through the future front door into the future kitchen. I have a glimpse of making myself coffee there in bare feet and a robe one day, staring out at the sun-tipped trees. I even think fondly of the vermin troubles I will surely have.
Don’t tell them, but I miss the peep and squeak of the ground squirrels.
This house has felt like a shell of measurements and specs, devoid of the life and history that resided in the thick walls of our old home. I’ve had a hard time connecting, though a woodpecker on a tree near my new bedroom recently gave me hope.
On that Saturday, our community breathed life and soul into the OSB-clad framework of our new house, gave it memories, the echo of laughter and a few grease stains. They reminded us that love and support sometimes arrive with a pneumatic nail gun.
In a single day, a workforce of friends and neighbors, dogs and children, and one criminally priced forklift recovered two weeks of work.
That wasn’t the real gift. The gift is that our house is turning into a home. And that has nothing to do with construction.
Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com