We lost our wingman today. After flying halfway across the world on his own dime to enlist in pay-to-play slave labor, Scotty departed our boot camp to go back to Alaska to run his business. It’s a sad day for us, not just because we’re now a ship without a captain, but because we’re missing a critical member of our family. What Scotty did for us was arguably one of the kindest acts of charity in the history of redneck fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants home improvement.

I dropped our fearless leader at T.F. Green International Airport, wiped away some tears, pulled myself together, and steered our borrowed Mercedes Benz south on I-95. I had some precious cargo in the back seat. Unfortunately, the item we purchased on-line at Home Depot this winter and had delivered to 91 High Street for immediate installation…was the wrong size. Shocking. The good folks at Home Depot delivered the wrong toilet. After vowing to never return, I found myself once again in the land of Orange Aprons.

I swallowed my pride, as I do 17 times each day for various reasons, loaded up my Bold Kohler, and wheeled the odd sized commode into the evil box store. There was some discussion because of my failure to produce a legit receipt, and I ended up exchanging the plastic wrapped toilet for $119 in store credit. Shit. I was now embroiled in a serious moral dilemma. Do I burn the gift card in front of as many Orange Apron adversaries as possible while proselytizing the value of buying local, or suck it up and use the money. Because, you know…I’m going ridiculously broke trying to fix this stupid house.

I caved. I used the money. I felt dirty and used. I thought about taking a shower when I got back to our dismantled plastic lined dumpster decorated home, but I didn’t. There was too much work to do. Our tenants came by tonight for a final walk through. It was all I could do to not explain in detail what utility soap, water, and Brillo Pads served. But I held it in. These are people who lived for years with shrubbery growing through windows. They lasted 36 months without cleaning the stovetop or the shower. God help them in their new home.

We now have their keys. We bought them out of the last week of their lease and I am writing this story from my beloved antique trestle table in the dining room. We don’t have counter tops, but we made a killer tri tip and scallop surf and turf dinner on a new Weber gas grill. We had it delivered. As it turns out, here in Rhode Island you can have damn near anything delivered right to your doorstep.

This has been a dangerous revelation for us. I have to preface this by saying that I live in Girdwood, Alaska. Nothing gets delivered in Girdwood, Alaska. Ever. You can’t get a plumber, you can’t get an electrician, and it takes a herculean effort to sometimes get your mail. Amazon? No fu*#ing way. We had to repair our roof a few years back and the roofing guy in Anchorage tried to talk me through how to do it myself rather than make the 45-minute trip down the Seward Highway to make 2500 bucks. I wish I were joking.

We have now turned home delivery into a sport. I catch Diana ordering random shit on her phone just to see how quickly UPS can get it here. Two days. This is the average. We could walk one block to get a nine-volt battery, but we order it on-line for delivery because it’s such a novelty. Seriously, after twenty years of living in small town Alaska, it’s a rush to have a truck show up in front of your home to graciously present a brown package of anything.

Tomorrow the floor guy shows up. We didn’t order him on-line, but come the weekend we’ll have killer refinished and repaired 131-year-old original wood floors. The granite counter tops are supposed to be installed on August 1st. It’s going to kill me that I’m on a flight August 3rd and have to turn over a home nicer than the one I live in full time to some other asshole who might destroy it again. We’re on the fence about renting it. It’s paid for, yes…but these repairs aren’t cheap. On one hand we need the revenue, on the other hand we love this place and selfishly want to be the ones to wreck it first.

It’s been a couple days since my last blog post. Apologies to my fan. Whoever you are. We had a big night in Boston and an early morning train to resume work-hell in the land of no internet. As for Sunday night…I won’t rub it in, but the Foo Fighters were mind blowing.  Kéa’s first-ever real rock concert.  It’ll be a tough act to follow.

They played for over three hours, broke into a Queen-Bowie cover of Under Pressure, and brought Joe Walsh (JOE EFF-ING WALSH!) of the Eagles on stage to play Rocky Mountain Way. Dave Grohl, former drummer for Nirvana, learned to scream from the best. On Sunday night he sounded better than Kurt Cobain ever did. Had we neglected to attend that show, I would never be able to look myself in the mirror again. To share that experience with my daughter, who is actually a Foo Fighter fan, was something I’ll never ever forget.

Dinosaur Junior was good. Ended with a Cure cover and some good old fashioned punk. Looking at the lead singer I feel like there’s still hope. He’s gotta be 70. We can all be rock stars….

Waiting for the Foo Fighters…. Come on Dave, give me a break.

Just walking in. Openers are Dinosaur Jr. and Ortiz. First real show for Kéa. Pretty stoked for an evening with Dave.

Forty-five minutes. This is how long it took our former tenant to clean her pint size microwave. Our construction crew had a very nice respite from our disaster of a house, but reality has seeped back into our collective mindset. Watching our renters take over half an hour to talk about how to spray down and clean a tiny microwave oven sent me over the edge.

It was 9:30 this morning when our darling couple sauntered into the house to collect their final belongings. Or at least visit them, because half of what they came for is still occupying valuable workspace. Dripping sweat and maybe some blood, I saw them round the corner to enter the house. It was poor timing as I was in the middle of ripping out counter-tops (poorly), which will be the topic of another story at 91 WHY Street.  I was forced to cease my wild “disassembly” project and witness the most egregious ineptitude of a feeble attempt to clean a small thing.

They spent about five minutes looking at the oven, no larger than two shoeboxes taped together. There was some discussion as to who would use the spray bottle cleaning solution and who would wipe it down. Renter “A” (I won’t use their real names in the off chance this blog is ever successfully digested by anyone other than my mother and I get sued for defamation) then takes a painfully long time to spray it while renter “B” takes a corner of the paper towel and dabs at the grease piles accumulated over god knows what time period.  It was like any disaster. Too horrific to turn away from and human nature forces you to retain a visual.

I’m now beginning to understand how our house ended up in this condition. I’m fairly certain these people weren’t let out of their homes until they somehow conned us into renting ours. They seemed nice three years ago. The rent checks came mostly on time. Annual spot checks didn’t disclose the crazy inside, and Diana and I were too busy with careers and kid to give it a second thought. Watching this spectacle, I had to either remove myself from the scene, or take the pipe wrench resting on our kitchen table and go John Belushi–Animal House Guitar with it on the micro microwave.

I chose to run an errand. When I returned, some of the items our renters came for had happily disappeared. The one thing I was really hoping they’d remove, however, was still taking up half our kitchen. An indoor treadmill. An indoor f*@king treadmill. Folded up and laughing at me.  We have low ceilings. Only a midget would be able to use this treadmill. These guys were not midgets. Mental midgets yes, but not physical midgets. Maybe over the course of three years, if they actually used this runner and repetitively hit their head many thousands of times it would explain why it took them 45 minutes to clean a microwave.

The microwave is now gone. Behind where the appliance lived out it’s tormented existence was grime, hair, trash, and mouse droppings. Honestly, I don’t know how people could live this way. By all rights these guys should be dead of some form of black mold mouse Ebola. At this point, I’m just trying to avoid the plague myself.

It’s now Sunday Afternoon. We were able to have a reasonably productive day, clean up, and catch the 162 from Kingston to Boston. Scotty bought us tickets to see the Foo Fighters at Fenway Park tonight should the storms hold off. “It’s times like these….”

Panic set in. We left 91 High Street on Thursday night with the house in shambles. The deck was sort of an idea, but for the most part it was a randomly cut out board bolted to the side of our home. That single board took Scotty and I six hours to configure. Diana spent six hours excavating the black mold from a single room. We still haven’t heard the end of it…

Collectively we made the decision to get up at 5:30 on Friday morning, shake off a short night, hit up Dunkin Donuts, and be pounding away at project central before 7am. It was roughly 7 pm when I pushed the last screw into the final piece of decking – thanks to Kéa helping me countersink and place all the joist fasteners. Inside, the entire upstairs morphed from prepped to painted.

After six excruciatingly long days, we decided we needed a day off. Should we sleep in and use a down day to scrub off paint and blood? No. Everyone was up early due to our freshly created construction time zone. What do you do at 8 am on a Saturday? What all good Rhode Island Swamp Yankees do on a spontaneous Saturday. Hello Block Island.

We had family join us for the hour-long nine mile ferry ride out to the block. It was a surprisingly cold and windy day for July. Sweatshirts were mandatory, but we didn’t let that get in the way of showing Scotty a little bit of Rhode Island history or famous clam chowder at the National Hotel. Nothing horrible happened and we had a nice day off, so I am officially apologizing for a really boring read. Don’t worry, we’ll be back at it tomorrow and something is bound to go wrong.

We have Foo Fighter tickets for tomorrow night at Fenway Park in Boston. The forecast calls for T-storms and heavy rain, so I’m really hoping the weathermen are wrong. It will be Kéa’s first real rock concert and we both really love the band. Diana and Scotty admittedly know two songs, but they’re game and being good sports. If all goes well, we’ll get a full day’s work in the books, hop an Amtrak train at the historic Kingston RI Station just up the street, and catch Dave Grohl belting out some iconic grunge. As long as the weather gods don’t want to be my Monkey Wrench.

It’s officially halftime. Everyone is feeling a little under the gun. Five days in and we’ve made some crazy progress, but pealing back the onion isn’t making it any smaller. We have yet to paint six of the seven rooms and the ceiling is somewhat prepped. We have all the materials for the deck, maybe. I can envision the final product, but as of tonight it’s still a pile of boards.

Scotty, Diana, and Kéa rallied, meticulously prepping our expanding paint venture. The house is taped, plastic wrapped, dry-walled, and ready to accept various hues of color. You’ll notice that I didn’t include myself that last sentence. Or really any sentence. The reason for this is that I suck at painting. It’s not that I’m just a bad painter or not patient enough. I’m actually horrible. I’m a menace. I have the innate ability to turn any paint worksite into a monstrosity. I could make a living threatening professional painters to turn up and “help.”

During this phase of the operation, I’ve been reduced to a modern day version of a 1950’s housewife. Clearly the most useless member of our team, I made the executive decision to be the errand boy. Someone had to drive north, fight Providence traffic, and resupply our needs. It just made sense for me to go. That, and Scotty paid me to leave.

Home Depot has always been slightly* overwhelming for me. It’s like being in a foreign country where you can’t read or speak the language….and there are no maps. If you can’t find some guy in an orange apron you’re completely fu*ked.  Even if you do find one of those orange apron guys, whatever they tell you makes absolutely no sense. “Yeah, the countersinks are in the bath area by the tube lumber and concrete wire.”

I wandered aimlessly through the dank aisles of Home Depot for about three and half hours. Dehydrated and suffering from exhaustion, I managed to find seven of the 18 items I was sent away to collect. Eventually I found my way to the check out aisle where the clerk immediately rubbed salt in my wounds. “Did you find everything you were looking for?” NO! This place is a massive maze of impossibly confusing parts of random things and when I feel like I get close, you close the only lane that might harbor the one thing I actually came in for so you can drive a forklift up and down for your own pleasure because you are cruel awful orange apron people!

Ok, that’s what I wanted to say. I just muttered a yes.  Then came the crushing blow. “Do you have a Home Depot card?” NO I DON’T HAVE A FU*KING HOME DEPOT CARD!! Because you assholes made me apply for a commercial card which took 90 minutes and three phone calls and a fax (A flipping FAX for god sake!) and in the end you DENIED my application because I don’t have a business! I told you that a rental home is not a business!

Ok, I only said that in my head. But now I was mad. During the drive back to South County I made myself a promise to never visit another Home Depot ever again. My new favorite hardware store of all time is Arnold Lumber. After using big names like Home Advisor, Home Depot, and Terminix, and being severely disappointed, I’ve been exceptionally happy with the little guy. Arnold Lumber, in business since 1911 outfitted us with high quality lumber, everything we needed for our project, and I didn’t get lost or see evil people with aprons.

 

I have a pile of manilla file folders on my desk at work. They’re labeled and have varying degrees of priority irrespective of their elevation in the stack. Depending on the day, I get through an astounding volume of production. And then other days, well…not so much. But not for lack of trying. Today, Day Four, was one of the “those” days.

The euphoria of the dumpster has waned. You have no idea how exciting it is to have a full size train-car dumpster delivered right to your driveway until it happens to you in real life. It will forever be a defining moment in my life. I rode that high for about 18 hours, which is exactly the moment I saw it again at 8:30 this morning. I remember thinking, “huh..someone left their dumpster in my driveway…” Oh wait. Right. I think I have a large triplicate receipt for that. Shit. I better put some stuff in it.

It’s incredibly easy to fill a dumpster. As long as you give your wife something to do while you frantically try to junk precious memorabilia and nostalgic relics dating back to when feathered hair and the Go-Go’s were publicly acceptable. I got busted trying to toss a nine dollar lamp that was clearly going to cost $17,497 to repair, and nearly got my head taken off. If this was a union gig I’d be making serious hazard pay. That being said, I’ve pulled the ultimate David Copperfield. I’ve taken what was once in a remarkably small space and blown it up into occupying a tremendous amount of volume. It’s like my basement is a clown car.

The other discouraging thing about packing a giant dumpster full of “junk” is that it doesn’t take up much of the work day. On our docket of incomplete tasks are painting, deck demolition and resurrection, and repairing an ungodly amount of damage. This includes our renters decision to see how long they could go without cleaning the bathroom. Spoiler alert…..

Three years. Apparently you can go three years without cleaning a bathroom while scheming a way to encrust a once perfectly good facility with more filth….aaaaand continue to enlist it’s basic service. As disgusting as this was, it served a purpose. Diana, always the martyr, volunteered to perform CPR on the WC. There was the initial wave of guilt as I watched her roll on the yellow rubber gloves, but I was able to purge our basement of many items – the identity of which will die with Mumford and his sons.

Day Four. We don’t have a lot to show for it. It was a prep day. Diana spent six hours in a small bathroom. Scotty prepped three bedrooms for a major paint overhaul. We got the ledger board up for the joist hangers to repair and extend the deck. Kéa repaired the wounded drywall where, as our tenant explained, “Ricky just tripped and bumped into the wall. It’s very thin there.  So his elbow, knee, and hip caused the damage with his elbow and arm making the big hole.” I hate those “thin” spots in the drywall…

 

The first thing you should know is that I’m driving a Mercedes. That in and of itself is amusing. At least to me. It’s not mine and has some minor rust that could pass as tough guy racing stripes, but still. I’m driving a Mercedes. It looks mildly out of place parked in front of our torn up tenement. The neighbors peer curiously from their daily routines as they speculate what may have happened in the house of horrors shading our borrowed German-engineered machine.

Later in our workday, I needed to move Das Auto to make room for a much more important item. Das Dumpster! It would never have occurred to me that you could just call up Mumford and Sons (I’m not kidding….it’s Mumford and Sons. They’ve been in the South Kingston, RI trash business since 1947 – who knew. I thought they were just an annoying band) and have your very own full size dumpstah delivered right to your driveway.

 

I could never have imagined that I would own any home in it’s entirety. Let alone a complete dump. That’s just a bonus. Diana and I celebrated last September when we mailed off the final mortgage payment. Couldn’t believe we had a house with no lien. Unfortunately upon our arrival Sunday we found out that we do have a lien, it was just misspelled. Just about everything seems to lean.

Three days in and we’re making some headway. Kéa was super excited to outdoor rock climb in a competitive camp all week, but you know… You can’t always get what you want. In this case, Diana, Scotty and I are getting what we need. Kéa has been a massive contributor to our Save 91 High Street campaign. We had to send her inside early when the thunderstorm came through however. Those metal staples in her head are hard targets for lightning.

Here’s what we’re looking at. Or more accurately here’s what I’m looking at while Scotty, Diana, and Kéa pick paint colors. They’ll visit no less than three of the 247 Dunkin Donuts within our five mile radius. That’s ok. I’ve got Paul and Al in the morning on 94 WHJY. I figured they’d be dead by now but they sound exactly the same. Must be the coffee…:

We were having so much fun. It seemed so innocent at the time. Kéa had been a rock star and worked her ass off all day. We pulled vines out of windows, cleaned gutters, cut back Jurassic growth, fought off black mold with gallons of bleach, and even built a beautiful guillotine for our renters should they decide to seek their damage deposit.  After day one of slaving away in 90 percent humidity we needed to hit the beach and enjoy some play time in the ocean. The surf was up.

Day One! In the books. We made so much progress. Feeling good, we decided to head back to our overpriced VRBO,  grab our surfboards, and head to Narragansett Town Beach. The passing thunderstorm had produced some chest high swell and it was time to play in the waves. I caught a few nice lefts and successfully snaked Kéa on her boogie board enough times to get her to switch out her foam kick board for a proper fiberglass classic 9’6″.  She was keen and paddled into some formidable waves. It was exciting to watch this kid actually catch some decent swell all on her own. Until it wasn’t.

No good deed goes unpunished. This kid was really surfing. She hadn’t quite found her feet atop the board as the wave pitched, but she was the motor as the longboard glided into the face of a legit wave. Brimming with pride, I shouted behind her to “paddle! paddle! paddle!” and watched as she disappeared behind the shifty mound of rolling ocean. And then disaster.

Red board. In the air. No Kéa. No red board. And finally, red board. Red Kéa. Red hair. More red than it should be. I could tell immediately from her expression that things were not ok. I waded through the breaking surf for an initial assessment. Breathing? Yes. Seeing? Yes. Normal roll and underwater hold down? No. Will this get better with a hot chocolate and some gummy bears? No. Do we need to high-tail it to the Emergency Room? Yes.

Still in my wet suit, I grabbed Kéa’s hand and labored through heavy sand to the crest of the dune where Scotty and Diana had set up shop. Diana had gone on walkabout and Scotty had been watching our misadventure from cute father-daughter postcard to your-wife-is-going-to kill-you. Scotty flipped me the car keys and I didn’t break stride until Kéa and I reached the parking lot.

The gash in Kéa’s head ended up being about an inch. We waited in the ER for over an hour. Me barefoot in a half-off wetsuit-no-shirt and Kéa in her still dripping rash guard. An emergency is an emergency, and I didn’t stop to change or even grab a towel. En route I passed a car that failed to successfully make a left turn on a yellow light. There are times where instinct kicks in and combat driving skills take over. I’m not condoning my actions, but in my defense there was A LOT of blood.

After four hours of holding multiple gauze pads and ice to my wailing child’s head, Kéa walked out of the hospital three staples to the skull heavier. She was a trooper. At times we joked about her surfing prowess and I truly believe that Kéa spent most of the four hours trying to calm ME down. As the father somewhat* responsible for the incident, I rattled more from shock than my daughter.

Today was amazing. Kéa passed the time recovering alone at our VRBO. Diana has hinted that she may speak to me again at some point in this trip. I applied for and was denied a Home Depot Credit Card. I activated my mother-in-law’s Mercedes car alarm. We met with a credit union loan officer who may or may not issue a home equity line of credit. OH. And by the way….our house is unbelievably trashed. I can’t wait for tomorrow.