On November 2, 2002, I decided to write this report out of boredom and frustration over the fact that I'm spending Saturday night at home because I'm broke and that half of my friends are working and the other half live at least three counties away from me here in the Land of Conformity.  I am spending this night at my kitchen table on my laptop.  Later on tonight, I will go to sleep on my mattress that has been sitting in the right of way of my sister's bedroom since July 27, 2002.  This is when I lost my bedroom to the renovation of our house. 

In order for you to understand how I truly feel, I have to tell you the whole story, or at least as much as I remember.  Have you ever heard that thing about how if you play Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon over The Wizard of Oz, you can get striking similarities.  If you read this story really slowly over the movie The Money Pit, you will also get similarities.

In the late fall of 1999, my father decided to tear the roof off our garage and build a new one.  Two weeks later, he had torn down three of the four walls and had busted up the entire floor.  It was then he decided to tell us that instead of replacing the roof, he decided to build his big dream room.  He had volunteered me, my grandfather, uncle, brother, and my brother's so-called friends to help him.  By the winter we had the walls up and a roof on but that's as far as he got until it got warmer.

Throughout 2000, he tinkered with his room.  He put interior walls in.  He tore them down when he changed his mind.  He installed plumbing in his new bathroom.  He put in insulation.  That's about all he got done in 2000.

In 2001, he waited again until it got warmer.  He spent alot of 2000 and 2001 working overtime so he really wasn't home to get a lot of this finished.  My mom gave him an ultimatum--Christmas or Divorce.  He got it drywalled, mudded, painted, carpeted and "liveable" two weeks before Christmas.

I say "liveable" instead of finished because to this day, our combination laundry room/hallway/office has no baseboards.  The laundry room section of this room was never mudded or painted.  The bathroom closet was never drywalled and it has unfinished plywood and 2x4's as shelves.  The bathroom was only coated in one coat of primer so you an see marks all over the walls.  This room to this day still has no siding.  Half of our entire house has blue polycor instead of siding.  This is why I call it "liveable."

Now that the room is constructed, we have another problem.  The picture below demonstrates what our roof line looked like at this point.

My grandmother and my father's mother, Carol, passed away on June 28, 2002.  After the funeral, around the first week of July 2002, my father tells me that in one month, he's going to rip off the middle section of the roof and replace it with new trusses and whatnot to get the roof evened out.  He needed something to take his mind off of our loss so he figured that this would probably do it.  He told me that in order to do this, I would have to pack everything up and put it in temporary storage throughout various parts of the house, including our old dining room and the basement.  It would only take one weekend but with the roof being open, he didn't want anyone to jump the wall and steal my stuff.  It take me a month but I got most of it out.  The only thing left is the entertainment center.  I couldn't move it and I had no where to put it once disassembled so I had to leave it. 

Friday, August 2, 2002  This was the day he started.  On Thursday nights at the job, I am working until at least 2:00 am.  I come home and go to sleep on the couch.  4:00 am, my father goes outside and starts removing shingles and plywood off of the roof.  Isn't there a law saying that no construction can begin until a certain time?  Since we all know that he ignores codes and laws, I didn't bother asking this question to him.  We then decide to start working.  We got the roof off before sundown.  We then put tarps up.  My dad said the magic words "forecast's dry tonight."

Around 3:30 am, we are all woken up to my father screaming at my brother between thunder strikes.  He was wrong.  My brother had been up for 2 hours trying to keep the tarps up and when my father woke up for his 3:00-am-piss, he discovered that he was wrong.  It was at this point that he woke up everyone within a half mile radius screaming at my brother who was actually trying to be the hero.

The next day, we discover the damage.  Miraculously, my entire entertainment center is fine.  Everything else, such as the carpet and drywall, is completely gone.  It was this point I officially had no bedroom.

We then that day get the trusses on the roof and start putting up plywood and shingles.  My father was hurrying everyone and everyone was getting frustrated.  My grandfather, that day, had an epiphany.  It had been three years to the weekend that my father started to replace the garage roof.  He had had enough.  It was around this time that he and my brother got into a fight.

My brother, for lack of a better description, does not know the meaning of the words "shut the fuck up."  He said something off color to my grandfather.  My grandfather hates my brother because he is, in his mind, the worst one out of all the grandkids.  "No respect for anything and dumber than owl shit" is his description.  They started arguing and then my grandfather said the worst thing I have heard anything say in my life.  "I bought 3 plots for your grandma.  I have an extra one.  I'll give it to you because that's all you're good for.  You should be dead."  Brother stormed off, grandfather officially quit the project, and my brother's friend and I look on in amazement.  It was at this point I knew that this wasn't going to be a quick project.  The next day, my brother's friend quit.  He claimed it was because his girlfriend was due to have their baby at any time (which was true) but we knew better.

August 6 through the 18th was my first vacation from both school and work in almost 5 years.  I had put in for it in June.  Guess what I did over the vacation?  Went to Hawaii?  Yeah, right.  Traveled every date of the Warped Tour during those 13 days?  That was what I really wanted to do but that was too expensive.  Sat at home all day watching talk shows and stroking it?  That was my plan after the Warped Tour thing fell through.   Have you guessed yet?  I spent every day except 2 working on the house.  My father rescheduled his vacation after he found out that it would take longer than one weekend to get it rain free.  His vacation ended on my 9th day off.  Two days later, he took the remainder of his sick time for the year.  He spent the first day in a lazyboy for his knee (the reason he used to get out of work) and then worked on the house until my vacation ended.  At work, they wonder why I'm now more stressed than ever at work.  It's because I didn't have a good vacation and it will be at least March 2003 before I will get the chance to take a reasonable amount of time off again.

My dad started ripping out the older bathroom and the interior walls.  He figured if he had to re-build one room, he might as well do the entire wing.  So after a year of having 2 bathrooms (we only had 1 for 5 people before the second one was in), we went back to 1 and a large open floor space.  He was going to take the old bathroom and split it in half.  I would get the one half as a hallway into my bedroom.  This is what I mean by this.  The wing that my bedroom is on was also added on by the previous owner.  The only way that idiot could do it was to have the entrance in what is my sister's bedroom.  We had, for over 20 years, to walk through my sister's bedroom (A1A as my sister calls it) to get into that bedroom.  The other half the old bedroom would become a water closet (toilet and sink only).

Over the next month or 2, we get the new interior walls and floors up and most of the ceiling in.  It was at this point that my sister's car, Bessie the Corsica, finally went to pasture.  That took most of what was left of his house fund.  Since then, he's also been working more.  He's been buying some drywall here, insulation there. 

I am writing this on November 2, 2002.  Here's what's going on at this point.  90% of the ceiling is in.  The only part not in is above the stairs going into the basement.  The interior walls are framed.  One full wall and two half walls are drywalled.  All the framing has insulation.  That is about it.

I have never been so frustrated with anything in my life---AND I WORK AT A MEGA-PLEX MOVIE THEATRE.  No pay, too much stress, and the some of the most stupid people you'd ever meet in your life (co-workers, office staff, customers, employees, everyone).

I have had absolutely no privacy except in my car.  I've had no rest.  I've gained at least 30 pounds since mid-August, making me the heaviest I've been since the beginning of puberty (for those of you who have never seen me before, I'm a large person--Both in weight and length).  My family is on the brink of collapse.  All for a house that we could have left 3 years ago.

My father and mother, before this fiasco started, were thinking about getting a new house.  My father had 2 houses in mind.  Both of them were exactly the same as this one now--2 bedrooms, 1 bath, no space.  There are 5 of us and the kids are 2 different sexes.  We'd be in the same shape before all this started.  My father was adamant about getting one of these 2 houses.  My mother said no to both.  As a retaliatory act, my father decided to take their savings and renovate the house and then sell it at a profit.  He was waiting for the right moment.  The roof for the garage was the right moment.

No idiot in their right mind would ever buy or rent this house.  That's my father's intention--get it done and get out.  I guarantee that it won't happen.  He will live here forever.  2 doors down from his father--the man who wants nothing to do with him and hasn't wanted anything to do with him since at least since my dad was 17 and was thrown out of the house.  I don't understand.  Never have and never will.

I will leave this story now with some words of advice.  If you are over the age of 18 and you still live at home and your parents start to renovate, do what I didn't do--MOVE OUT!!!

I will leave this spot open for any further developments and once I get a bedroom again, I will update this page as a testament to anyone who is thinking of renovating a house by themself.

Thank You

Ben the Perdedor
November 2, 2002

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