The last time someone said “Lady you can’t do that” to me was years ago. That occasion involved constructing a swinging gate. So I stood there thinking about the gate and the fact that I made it work when the contractor repeated his delivery, this time twisting his cigar around in his mouth.
“That is a load-bearing wall.”
I shrugged my shoulders indicating I would not be hiring him for the job.
Had he taken the time to climb through the attic hole as I had, he would have discovered how the beams ran and his crew would have started the job in three weeks which is the length of time it took me and some family volunteers to knock down a non-load bearing wall along with the other existing plaster walls in the house and clear away the debris.
I had bought a one-hundred-year-old one-story brick shotgun house in Louisville, Kentucky’s Phoenix Hill neighborhood and like several other residents in the area, was eligible for renovation grants. By doing part of the work myself, sweat equity would stretch the improvements. I learned the word rehab and that hammer and nails were somewhat like needles and thread, only larger. I was an artist. I could do this. Of course, I could.
By removing the wall, a hallway could be made with a bedroom to one side in much the same manner of a mobile home layout with a kitchen on one end of the hall and a living room on the other end instead of a straight shotgun placement. Made sense to me.
Renovating an old house means facing hurdles with a will to win not getting splashed too much when jumping over small and large puddles. After finding a reasonable contractor we agreed that before him starting the project, I would tuc point the inside of the structure.
Tuc pointing became my middle name. To this day those two words evoke a memory of seemingly endless brick walls and the smell of mixing mortar and sand .
Learning to tuc point was an adventure. Lucky for me I was the student who was ready because down the street did appear a bricklayer who had worked for my uncle’s company in previous years. His name was Joe and I had the pleasure of listening to his tall tales as he worked on a brick wall at a friend’s building.
When I was eight years old, my Aunt Frances cautioned me, “You think that just because you watch somebody do something you can do it too.” She was stopping me from diapering my brand new baby sister, saving the tiny wriggling infant from unintended safety pin sticks. We were at a summer vacation spot called “Sugar Creek” so instead of clothing the sister, I ran
What I failed to notice in watching Joe was the fact that he kept a rag in his back pocket for a reason. The lesson of mixing just enough mortar for the time you have to work was not lost on me. but keeping hands dry was. I bought several pairs of gloves, The rubber pair was unwieldy and the cloth pair was saturated immediately. By the end of my first effort, my fingers were wrinkled but the wall looked nice.
After a few more tuc pointing sessions I stopped by to tell Joe my painful injury story. He waved a rag in front of my face and admonished me while choking back his laughter, “Keep your hands dry. Always keep your hands dry!”
This was not a crawdad adventure so I appeared at a restaurant celebration for my birthday with Vitamin E and bandaids on all fingertips.
I had learned a rehab lesson. Joe was henceforth enthroned in the increasing list of my life coaches right alongside Aunt Frances.
Some coaches stop you from doing harm to others and some pick you up after you fall but none of them ever say, “Lady, you can’t do that. When all is said and done, that’s an invitation to climb a brick wall or patch it.