Uptown Magazine: Charlotte Center City and Downtown

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. It seems to me that most folks, including myself, never really abide by our resolutions. I read somewhere that a majority of folks sign up for new gym memberships at the beginning of the year, and 80% of them never actually go. But I’m bucking the trend this year; I have one resolution that I have got to stick to. We are renovating a house, and I have to make sure it’s finished by the spring of ’08.

Some background: Julie, Kate and I currently have a tiny house. 3 beds and 2.5 baths. One bedroom is where Julie and I sleep, one’s for Kate, and one is a microscopic home office where Julie and I can’t scoot back from our desks without bumping chairs or rolling over dogs. It’s past the time to upgrade.

We bought a 46 year-old fixer-upper in March of ‘07 in a neighborhood on the rise. And with our new wispy white blond haired priority running around in diapers, we didn’t buy for the view, or the building’s amenities. We bought for the huge front yard, and to be in one of the better school districts. Our new home had been literally closed tight as a pickle jar for 7 long years. When the house was opened up for the first time, you can imagine the green funk and furry beady eyed creatures that escaped. We even had a mama pigeon living in one of the windowsills. (We let her stay until the babies could fly.) I convinced Julie; yes, we were buying it for the bones, yes, the bones, and the yard and the schools. Little did we know that even the bones were rotted out and needed replacing. But at least I was excited about having a bigger office.

So fast forward 9 months to today. We have an addition that’s been fused onto the top, most of the innards of the house have been replaced, 90% of the drywall is gone, for some reason half of the front yard has been paved over by the mason, and our toilets are sitting on the back patio, but we are making achingly slow progress. Through this process I have become educated on contractor-speak; I have found that if a contractor says it’ll be done tomorrow, it might be done next week; if he says next week, then potentially in a month, and if he utters the words ‘next month,’ then you might as well get someone new because you’ll never see that guy again.

For some reason I decided to punish myself and figure out the cost per day of our construction loan. All I can say is that I thank god that my wife has a good job, because magazine editors just don’t make what they used to, and I could have supported the construction process for a good week or two–just long enough to wait for the plumber to show up (but not actually plumb anything).

So back to my resolution: I’ve been pushing my general contractor to provide us a timeline. “Derek, when do you think we’ll be done? I’ve promised my wife that we’ll be done by the spring. Derek, can we meet at the house to figure out how much longer it’ll take?” He reluctantly agrees, and as we walk through the addition with no drywall, and the garage with no door, and standing on 46 year-old newly exposed linoleum floor in the kitchen admiring the exposed electrical wiring, I finally was able to pin him down. He confidently responds, “Oh, in a month or so.”

~Todd Trimakas
Editor