16th Street

Sometimes the house feels opposed to me. Logically, I know the work I am doing is for me, but it doesn't always feel like that. I haven't slept inside my walls since November, and the small projects have come to feel like a behemoth undertaking. It feels like I'm laboring for some close but not intimate family member. I entered the project freely, but I'm feeling increasingly resentful, and having a hard time remembering why I liked them in the first place. 

I pull up my pant legs and ask my friends to inventory the bruises. "This is what my house did to me today." 

"I had to crawl under the roof but also over a pipe, I was breathing dust," I try to explain. 

It's nice when friends come to help, but alone with dad, I sometimes allow the negative thoughts to run wild. "These fucking wires, designed to trip me. Why the hell would the previous owners leave trash in my way? Goddamn high-quality wood, cede to my drill. Fuck you, house, honestly."

But then, the victories. I am covered in dirt, but now I have a functional drain for my toilet. The inside of my nostrils, my hair, is all coated in dust, but there are safe electrical outlets in my bedrooms. (Bedrooms, plural. They are both mine.) The counter space in my kitchen will double. I will have a whole walk-in pantry. 

And my people, oh my people. What more pure expression of love could there be than dragging literally two tons of plaster and drywall from the walls, down the ADA ramp, into the bed of my brother's truck, and to the dump? What better way of saying "I care" than pressure washing my roof in the rain? And then my dad, spending his free evenings drawing electrical diagrams, meticulously fitting pipes. 

Oh, house. You give and you take. What is it you desire, and what are your intentions for our relationship? We started as strangers, but we are so well acquainted now. I scrape the walls two-and-a-half inches at a time, running my hand along the surface to feel the texture laid seventy-five years ago, and contrast it with the smoothness I leave behind. 

I study the pencil marks of long-gone carpenters before laying fresh material to give the floors a new life. There is a sense of excitement creeping into the space. Most of the tedium is behind us, and big-impact projects lie ahead. 

"How is the house?" someone will ask. 

"It's..." I struggle for words. "It's coming along, slowly but surely." An oversimplification of our relationship, skimming over the struggle. But that's what will be left when we are done. The house and I will co-exist, each better for the effort.