The Tai Chi of Carpentry

Today is December 1st. I can’t take a shower today. I couldn’t take one yesterday either. Or the day before or the entire week before that. Tomorrow’s prospects don’t look so hot either.
I guess, technically, I could take a shower. The plumbing works. Trouble is, there’s no wall around the bathtub, so the water would become rain in our basement. We don’t like rain in the basement.

The day we moved into our house I vowed to rip the nasty pink bathroom tile out and replace it. “Fixing up that butt ugly bathroom is my top priority,” I confidently told Sara and a bevy of our best friends as we sat on the hardwood floor of our new living room and drank bubbly out of plastic champagne flutes, boxes piled all around us.

Six years later the crappy pink tile was still on the bathroom walls, although some of it was barely clinging -- the result of a little moisture problem. Over the years the grout had become even skankier, pulling away in some places and holding fast in others due to the adhesive properties of a robust black mold. The middle of the wall bowed out as if it had a potbelly. The mold and mildew had genetically evolved so as to be immune to cleaning products. I envisioned colonies of icky organisms breeding behind the tiles.

I haven’t had a bath in six years.

Finally I admitted that I was never going to retile the bathroom. I didn’t have the time, and, the truth is, I was afraid I’d fuck it up and spend the next six years looking at wiggly rows of tile and cursing myself instead of placidly reading an LL Bean catalogue. I knew the only answer was to hire someone to do the job, but it’s hard for me to admit that I can’t do something, especially when there are people who say things like “I’d never even screwed in a light bulb before, but tiling the shower was so easy. It only took me half a day.” Or, “Retiling our bathroom was an easy weekend project.” Even though I know they’re lying I still feel judged for not doing it myself. To make me feel even more inadequate, I know several people actually capable of doing a project like this on their own, making it up along the way.

But not everyone has the patience and dexterity to pull it off. Patience, to put it mildly, is not one of my virtues. When faced with something fiddly I get easily frustrated and swear like a sailor in labor. My home remodeling efforts generally send the household into an emotional tailspin; Lulu hides and acts like she’s beaten daily and Sweet William gets excited and screams. Sara puts on headphones and, I suspect, tries to will herself to her happy place.

So, for all our sakes, my path was clear: suck it up and hire a professional tiler.

Newsflash: Professional tilers are really fucking expensive.

That’s how I came to hire my friend Tim to do the job. He’s a carpenter/handyman who I believe can handle most anything he tries. He told me that he works slowly and that he’s never done a job like this before so it would take a little time. He wasn’t sure how long. Big deal, I thought. It’s a tiny bathroom. How long can it take? Three days? Five?

After the deal was struck, but before he got started Tim let me know that, upon reflection, he didn’t have a problem tearing out the wall and putting up cement board, but he didn’t feel comfortable tiling, since he’d never done it. Before I could start rocking in a corner, Tim let me know that Jim, a guy he occasionally works with, could do the job. At first I was a little pissed off – here was a guy who I believed could do most anything and he was telling me there was something he didn’t want to try because he didn’t feel confident he could wing it. Wait a minute. I’ve heard this story somewhere before. Have I mentioned how much I like this guy?

I did the tear off. I started at 2 pm on a Sunday afternoon and was finished and cleaned up an hour later. It was gratifying to pop those hideous squares off the wall, as I’d wanted to do for the last six years. And, thanks to years of neglect, they were hardly attached at all, making it an easy job. It was a great feeling: phase one, complete.

According to plan, Tim showed up on Monday morning and got to work. By the end of the day the plaster was off, exposing the studs. By Tuesday night there was some mighty fine looking blocking installed (small pieces of 2”X4” stuck between the studs). Tim worked another full day on Wednesday, took Thursday off for Thanksgiving, and was back at it on Friday and Saturday. The bathroom didn’t look that much different.

My friend Tim is not a loafer. I have yet to see him take a break. However, it was almost a week into the project and I was still looking at a skeletal bathroom. On Saturday I stood in the doorway, made small talk and watched him work. His movements were deliberate and steady. He would occasionally stop what he was doing, sit back, look at his work carefully, then lean forward and continue the task. The unhurried motion was quite beautiful, almost meditative. He didn’t seem bothered that he’d been working in my tiny bathroom for days. He apologized for taking so long, but I don’t think there was a thought in his head that he should feel bad for taking his time. At least I hope not.

I’m the opposite -- I work as if I’m under siege, battling my way through every day. Always rushing, always apologizing for taking too long, always behind, always pissed off. There’s never enough time, never enough hot oil to pour over the wall. Work isn’t even about winning; it’s about holding ground. Maybe this is why I’m looking for another job.

Today is day 10 without a shower. Jim, the tiler is here. He’s not quite done, but we should be enjoying all the advantages of indoor plumbing by the weekend. After that, Tim will go on to his next job and leave my house much better for having spent time here. As much as I want a shower, I’ll miss having Tim around.

Tim’s Tai Chi-style of carpentry makes me realize that I want to be more deliberate. I want to enjoy my work. I want to be honest and unapologetic. The question, as always, is how do I make these fundamental changes?

Tim’s not exactly pulling in the big bucks but he enjoys what he does and maybe that’s the key. It’s a philosophy that easily fits on a bumper sticker: Follow Your Bliss. (After all the wonderful things Joseph Campbell wrote, that’s his legacy – a quip slapped on every ’89 Volvo wagon in America. At least the adhesive helps keep the rust bucket from falling apart.)

A friend once told me a parable about the two Hindu goddesses; Saraswati, goddess of knowledge, music and art and Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and prosperity. The upshot of the story is that if you follow the goddess of knowledge, the goddess of prosperity will become jealous and follow you. This tale is unconfirmed by Wikipedia, or any other internet source I could find, so either it’s not well known or my friend made it up. Either way, I like it. And, I’ll bet if I could figure out a way to condense the story I could make some solid cash by putting it on a t-shirt.