Fresh air. Water. Sunshine. Freedom. The constant presence of family members. A comfy chair under a shady tree in the backyard. A living room that doesn’t look like a tornado died there. A deck with stairs.
I guess I’m talking about renovations. I promised myself that I wouldn’t subject you to that, but I feel the need to share my suffering.
There are, I know, those who have suffered longer - years longer - with their household renovations. There’s nothing like mentioning the word “reno” to get everyone in the room recounting their worst nightmare renovation stories.
Ann in Ashcroft mentioned to me today that four years later, they’re just finishing off their household renovations. She didn’t elaborate.
I knew a lady in Fort St. John - actually, she was a farmer and rural politician in Cecil Lake - who told me that her husband had removed the stairs in the house to replace them and 10 years later they were still using an extension ladder where the staircase used to be.
Another lady recently told me that she and her husband went looking at houses for their son who was moving back to Ashcroft, but most of the houses they looked at hadn’t seen more than a touch of paint in decades. I noticed the same thing 11 years ago when we went looking at houses in Cache Creek.
However, it’s somewhat understandable. Renovations aren’t for sissies. They aren’t cheap, either. Even I would rather spend $2,000 on a brand new camera than new flooring, even though the flooring is expected to last much longer than the camera.
At this moment, 19 boxes of hardwood maple flooring are sitting in Tool Man’s workshop, next to six gallons of paint; and all of the new decking materials are sitting in the backyard, getting rained on, but safely out of the way of the excavator that is digging holes all over the yard in preparation for various other renovations.
Only thing is, there’s a mountain of dirt sitting in my vegetable garden. I was looking at it this morning and thinking that I should plant a vertical garden this year.
Wendy Coomber is editor of the Ashcroft-Cache Creek Journal