House makeover is daunting

Clearly the long tooth of winter needs to go the dentist and have a root canal. I will gladly pay the bill.

I hate to admit it but I’ve imagined slipping the dentist an extra fifty bucks to forgo Novocain when removing said long tooth, just to emphasize how much of a pain in the posterior Old Man Winter has been this year.

A few weeks ago the crusty old curmudgeon spawned a rebel in me that fought the hard fight against any further snow blowing of the driveway or shoveling of the back step, no matter how much snowfall arrived.

I threw down my mitts and stomped out a eight-inch wide donkey trail of a path—in “Yosemite Sam” fashion—across the top step of the back porch and made a zigzag off-road track down my driveway.

In my warped escapist little mind, I thought I could beat the season into submission if I didn’t play along.

That didn’t pan out too well when it snowed some 14 inches on March 21 and reminded me that I’d best stick to things I can control, like how much chocolate I eat.

I’m also learning lessons about what it means to go forward with a house renovation project and if I was ever meant to learn a lesson about what in fact I do not know, this project is rocking first place as the teacher in that classroom.

All I wanted was new house siding and new windows. Nail the new wood on all four sides and slap those windows in the squares on my house. 

It’s not rocket science. End of discussion.

Little did I know there are decisions, decisions, decisions and big words like building material quotes, unit prices, quantity and total prices that would have me working three more jobs just to pay down the debt.

Just this afternoon I became aware of my dry eye sockets staring blankly at three and four pages of product descriptions that included 15 lbs of plastic-top nails, reams of house wrap and soffit, staples, foam, and—channel runner? Sounds like a movie about a guy trying to escape from one country to another by gunning it over the floodway.

But I know it’s not because my price quote says I need 17 of the little suckers.

I’ve had to learn other daunting word decisions like casement, brick mould, jamb, and argon gas. All I wanted was a window. Just a window.

The whole experience has been akin to a hankering for cereal and then standing in the breakfast aisle at the grocery aghast at the city block-long choices at hand.

That new fangled organic hemp and crabapple mixture with chia seeds sounds interesting but I just want good ol’ “Cheerios,” thanks.

I am a “simple is as simple does” gal and yet I dream of this old house makeover and the molecular changes that are about to crank out around here, like the transformation of Cinderella’s rags.

It’s really going to be something else.