The Fixer Upper
My buddy Phil Ryarson bought an old house with the intention of fixing it up one day. He told me he had a vision and a dream. The problem is that he was broke as a joke and never had enough money to do anything he had planned. He lived from week to week and paycheck to paycheck, and subsisted on Taco Bell breakfast burritos more than he was willing to admit.
His plans for the house were essentially modest in scope. He wanted to redo the kitchen and upgrade the bathroom. The living room had a carpet that looked like it was from 1977 and didn’t match well with a 55-inch flat screen TV. The yard was an overgrown jungle littered with desiccated piles of dog crap that would turn to dust the moment anyone stepped on them. The basement was furnished with a semi-stocked bar and a fold-out table with metal fold-out chairs for when me and some of our friends came by to play poker or spades. The walls were covered with thin wood paneling and a mounted deer head. It was like a home away from home.
One Saturday after work, Phil decided to strip the wallpaper in the kitchen so he could paint it all blue. He immediately ran into problems. There were about seven layers of wallpaper, nearly thicker than the wall itself. He got to work scraping away layer after layer. He loved when he scored a long strip of paper. As he made his way around the room, he stopped every hour or so for a fresh can of PBR he kept on ice in a cooler on the floor. He called me up asking if I wanted to help. I said I’d be by in a bit, since I knew I’d be paid in beer.
“What a mess,” he said as we approached the fridge. As we peeled away more paper — shades of vermillion, fuchsia, a flower fest in beige — we came upon a false panel that had been plastered in place god knew how many years before.
“Now what the shit is this?” he said. We started to chisel away at the plaster with a screwdriver. To get better access we decided to move the fridge, which looked as if it’d been there since the dawn of time. A perimeter of rust marked where it had been on the vinyl floor. Dozens of ants scurried away.
“That looks like a problem,” I said.
“We’ll get to that in a bit. Let’s find out what we got behind here.”
Once we had chipped away most of the plaster, we saw how close Phil had come to killing himself. A thick black conduit of wiring led down through the floor.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” he said aloud, removing his White Sox hat caked with a yellow rim of sweat around the brim. “That there’s a live wire.”
His house was starting to remind us of The Money Pit. We reenacted that scene when the kitchen catches ablaze and the turkey flies across the mansion like a Hail Mary. “Looks like we’re gonna have to replace this wall. Let’s move the fridge back for now. I don’t feel like messing with that. ”
After calling it a day, we went downstairs to the basement where it was cooler and cracked more beers. A ballgame was on TV. I sat on the futon while Phil kicked back in an old pleather recliner that looked like a dog had had for a snack. He called his dad to complain that he had bought a lemon. After he hung up, a loud splintering groan came from above, shaking the foundation of the house.
“Ugh, what now?” he moaned. He started to get up from his chair.
“You can stay put,” I offered, jumping to my feet. “I’ll go check it out.” I bounded up the wooden stairs two at a time to the kitchen.
“Ya see anything?” Phil called.
I took a quick look around for anything amiss.
“All clear up here!” I yelled.
At that, the fridge crashed through the floor.
“Phil!”
I peered down through the gaping hole, expecting the worst. Phil stood beside the crumpled fridge that had destroyed his old chair.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he said, shaking his head with a look of wonderment. At that, we both started to laugh. And then, Phil cried.
