Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

This Old Haunted House

Back when I had my kitchen remodeled, I had some trouble getting contractors to return my phone calls. That was about a year and a half ago. Apparently a slumping housing market is good to people who want to pay other people to do home improvements, because now my phone won't stop ringing.

I should start at the beginning. Last summer at the fair I filled out a card to win a free basement remodel. As I suspected, I didn't win a basement remodel, but I did get a couple of calls from a contractor who wanted to give me an estimate to do my basement. I begged off because we were still cleaning out my aunt's apartment, and I couldn't see beyond that. The contractor asked if she could call me back in October, and I said yeah, sure, you do that.

Damned if my phone didn't ring again on October 1.

I figured I should at least get the estimate, because God knows my basement won't remodel itself.

I should go back farther. Have I ever mentioned that my basement is a pit?

A few owners back, or so the story goes, the basement was "finished" by a photographer for use as his studio. The walls are panelled in peg board. The electrical outlets are in the ceiling. Everything, and I do mean everything, was painted black. And in the last dozen or more years, everything the guy did has started to fall apart. The florescent lights no longer light. The ceiling is falling down. It is hard to describe just how bad it is.

Ok, here's an annecdote. A few years ago the HVAC guy came to service the furnace, and when he came down the stairs he said "My God, this looks like Jeffrey Dahmer's basement."

You know, I've always believed the photographer-needed-a-dark-studio story. I know some photographers with basement studios, and they that aren't all black, but I still prefer the thought that my basement was a photographer's studio to the notion that it was a satanic den for ritual sacrifice.

Anybody remember a Saturday Night Live sketch with "This Old Haunted House?" Bob Vila installing the acoustic tiles to muffle the screams of the damned souls?

Actually in a metaphorical way my house was haunted. I really didn't want to stay here when my ex and I split up, but the housing market at the time wasn't one where I could dump the dump and still afford to live anywhere but a box. I hated this house and nearly everything about it, and the fact that I was a divorced loser living in squalor. Finally in the last few years I've been having the squalid things fixed...I had the nasty carpet replaced with Pergo. I had the gold-flecked tiles in the tub covered with white fiberglass. And of course, except for its Lilliputian scale, I now have the kitchen of my dreams.

The black basement is really the last thing that needs to be exorcised.

Which brings me back to where I started, sort of. The nice contractor from the fair gave me an estimate. They could give me a lovely basement, but I figured I needed to do some of that "due diligence," as we say at work. (I can't order copy paper anymore without purchasing asking me for a due diligence report. I suspect we are now misusing the term.)

So I diligently got another estimate, and this contractor was just as nice, and he also proposed putting in a bathroom. I'd never thought of that, but now that I do, it sounds kind of handy. And even with the bathroom, his bid is cheaper.

(Another aside. Of course I can't afford to just buy a new basement, but I have such a ridiculous amount of equity that all I had to do was make a ten-minute phone call and show a guy at a bank my driver's license, and they want to lend me way more money than I took for my original mortgage. The process was supernatural, it was so easy, and I'm wondering if I accidently signed a pact with the devil instead of taking out an equity line of credit. I mean, I'm not sure the bank guy even looked at my license.)

So now I need another bid to see which of the first two bids is more reasonable. I found a site online where I could fill out a form with the work I need, and they match me up with contractors in my area. (It looked like a good site, because it included license numbers, insurance information, and reviews from registered but not anonymous users.) I did this at lunch. I was literally still looking at the pictures of the featured contractor's work when the first guy called me back...ten minutes, tops. He's coming tomorrow. And after dinner tonight another guy called to make an appointment.

I've never been so popular.

Posted by Nic at October 25, 2006 06:19 PM | TrackBack