Dining Room Table Saw

When it comes to home renovation I used to joke that I was in college before I knew that every family didn't have a table saw in the dining room. My grandfather, as the story goes, owned one very long narrow building on the corner of Main & D Street in Oilton. It was reputed to have been a house of ill fame. I don't know that for sure, but was "across the tracks" as they say and apparently in the right neighborhood.
My grandfather had the building cut in half. He moved one half to the corner of Main & C and donated it to the congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. I remember going to services there a few times.
The other half he left on the corner of Main & D and gave it to my parents. They were newly married, my dad just home from WWII and there was a tremendous housing shortage. They were so thrilled to have their own place...such as it was.
They were young and strong and hardworking and they lived and worked on that crumby little sad excuse for a house through three children and thirty-five years. Every time they'd get a few bucks ahead, they'd buy some paint or sheet rock, shingles or knotty pine paneling. The entire foundation was constructed from rocks my dad picked on the the side of the road and threw into the back of his truck.
Ultimately, it was a pretty nice house. Certainly as good or better than most of our neighbors. Dad said there was probably enough lumber in it to build three houses. And the plumbing and wiring, done completely by Dad and his best friend Lyle was added onto so many times it looked like a giant spider web in the attic. And the hot water had to run around the house full circle before making it to the front bathroom.
So with this history, I guess it's not surprising that Bill and I would buy a 1921 arts & crafts bungalow that "needed some work". Fortunately Bill is pretty handy. He's not afraid to try anything and he's managed to become a pretty dad-gummed good carpenter.
We've done most of the work ourselves. Or rather he has, with me offering helpful suggestions like "is that level?" But mostly he does such fabulous work and I am amazed at what he gets done.
We're currently in year six of what we jokingly call our twenty year restoration schedule.
However, the bathrooms in this house are really, really sad. Some very helpful person in the mid-sixties decorated one all green and the other all brown. Those are not my favorite bathroom colors, especially the brown. I always think maybe it's not really clean.
With all the time Bill has donated to the city the last few years, our progress has come to a near standstill.
So we bit the bullet, so to speak and hired a contractor.
As I write this. The formerly brown room is now all hardy board and drywall gray. Two guys are doing something in there pretty much all day long. Maybe they are just listening to the radio. Country music at 20,000 decibels.
Bill says that everything that happens to me, to us in our lives, ends up in a book. He warns people not to say anything to me that they wouldn't want to see in print.
I am not that bad. I want you to know that.
Still, if my next novel feels coated in chalky dust and screams of George Strait, well you know what happened.