Home Sweet Loved-and-Hated Home

By Kris Neri

Femme Donna’s recent blog that dealt with her house-renovation woes brought to mind my own love-hate relationship with houses and home renovations.

I love houses. Big ones, small ones. I like their interesting architectural details and the way they’re put together. Mostly, though, I love the touches people add to make them unique.

When I can’t quite fall asleep, sometimes I design a house mentally until I drift off. The resulting efforts  are never good — form fouls function more than following it in my semi-sleep state, with rooms just springing out in odd places. Oh, I’m sure I’ve come up with a few exceptional design ideas, but I can’t remember them.

I’ve always harbored a secret fantasy of inheriting an old wreck of a house, filled to the rafters with fascinating junk. I love the idea of remodeling it, transforming it from a hovel to a jewel. Not for the financial gain, but the adventure. Since nobody in my family has ever owned such a place, the odds of one coming into my life seem slim. But I gave the experience to my protagonist Tracy in Revenge for Old Times’ Sake, so I got to sift through the belongings Tracy's daffy movie star mother left in her monstrosity of a house, which I’m slowly remodeling from the comfort of my desk chair and my laptop. 

 The thing is, while I’ve never had the fun of picking through all the stuff filling a house like Tracy’s, I have completely remodeled a home. Strangely, given my fantasy, I must confess it wasn’t any fun at all! The house we owned when we lived in California made the poor choice of standing in the way of the 6.8 Northridge Earthquake. Every room in the house had to be repaired or rebuilt. The damage was so extensive, we had to move out before the repairs could be made. And given the lack of rental housing after the earthquake, especially for people with four pets as we had at the time, we had to live for most of that year in a rental RV parked in our driveway.

Despite the cramped quarters, it should have been great, a part of my fantasy come into being. But I   hated it all. The daily wrangling with the contractor and his crew, as they fell farther behind, the battles with the insurance company, the endless mistakes, and the many trips I took to hardware and design stores. Still, I should have recognized it as the chance to reshape a house that I’d always longed for.

It’s probably fair to admit that my love of houses and home remodeling is limited to the virtual realm.

 That’s why my favorite TV shows are House Hunters, House Hunters International and, in a pinch, Property Virgins. In case you're one of the few people who has never seen them, they're mostly lamely-scripted, semi-reality shows, in which we watch strangers search for a new home. For a house-loving voyeur, there is nothing better than watching one of these shows. They let people like me see homes of all sizes and price-ranges throughout the world. What could be better? I record them so there’s always a selection on my DVR. They’re also especially great for busy people, since there’s probably only eight minutes of fresh content in a half-hour show, making it easy for DVR viewers to zip through the rooms and yards, before moving onto the next house hunt.

If only the people looking at the houses weren’t so lame. First-time buyers with limited budgets expect palaces. House-hunters who take pride in never cooking require showcase kitchens. People spending millions on a home whine about the color of the paint. I find myself shouting at the screen, “You’re spending two million dollars on a house — you can afford a can of paint.” During some shows I shout so much, I have to mute the set and just content myself with looking at the pictures, or it agitates me too much.

What can I say? I might love houses, especially in the virtual realm, but my favorite house-buying shows are also the shows I love to hate.

Comments

[Leslie]

Seventeen years ago we decided to buy some property and build our own house. Here we are seventeen years later still building. But for all the pains of doing it ourself the joy of our own house has been great. I was the one doing all the designing. So, there are many things that I need that are non existent. But the soon to be done mural on my ceiling by one of my daughters and the mural up the stairway by another make the wait worth it. Plus every board and brush stroke have been done with love.

[Nancy Lauzon]

I love House Hunters, it's one of my 'guilty pleasure' reality shows. We basically gutted our house when we bought it. It's quite an adventure when all you have is a microwave to cook with and your refrigerator is in the garage. Ah, those were the days...

[krisneri]

Oh, Leslie, it does sound like the whole house represents a labor of love, and really worth it.

You're so right, Nancy. It's not fun at the time, but over time you can look back on it with fondness.

[Miami cataract surgery]

I know how it is, I hate renovations, last time when I was doing that to my house , it took 5 months and this was only for painting the walls and changing some doors, I thought I will never finish it, it was frustrating to live there with all that mess. But the feeling after you've is great, you feel free and so comfortable.

[Elaine Viets]

Kris, Don and I renovated an old house early in our marriage. Amazingly, we're still married. Like you, my renovations are confined to the virtual.