Handyman, Part Deux

So it's been brought to my attention that Jared feels I didn't give him a fair shake in my recent post. Specifically, he wanted to know why I didn't post more photos of things that he'd finished. I was tempted to reply, "Well, finish something and I'll blog about it." But that's a cheap shot. I thought, instead, that in honor of Father's Day I'd set the record straight.

The truth is, Jared is excellent at seeing projects through to completion--better than me, to be honest. It just takes him a long time.

Why, you ask?

Well, it's certainly not laziness. This man works long and hard. About the only time you'll find him sitting on the couch on his day off is when a) there's a blizzard outside, or b) he's holding the baby (because I tend to make a fuss when he fires up the welding torch or tries to ride the tractor while doing so).

I could make a crack here about his perfectionistic streak and his adherence to the engineering motto ("If it ain't broke, take it apart and fix it anyway"). Truthfully, this is one of the reasons why projects take a long time to get done. On the other hand, his perfectionism pays off. You can be sure that that new retaining wall is going NOWHERE, that the new fence is going to be straight as an arrow, and that you won't burn the house down when you switch on that new light fixture. I've dealt with enough ill effects of sloppy DIY work at the hands of the previous owners of our home to appreciate what I've got in my obsessive-compulsive husband.

But probably the biggest reason that it takes Jared a long time because he is generous with his spare time. There are plenty of evenings where he's come home raring to get to work but instead he spends time with the kids so I can go for a jog, run errands, or just plain take a break after a long day of kid-wrangling. There are plenty of Saturday mornings that he's spent helping a neighbor prune a tree or rake leaves or roof a house instead of working on his own home and yard. Even around our house, he doesn't get to spend all his free time working on the projects he'd like to work on. Grass grows, taxes come due, pipes leak, cars break down. . .Jared isn't only my general contractor; he's also my lawn service, accountant, plumber, mechanic, and so much more.

Finally, I have to point out that so much of what goes into Jared's home improvement projects can't really be documented in photographs. I thought about posting a snippet from his to-do list (he keeps a running list on the computer, with dates next to each project as it's completed), but it's much too long. He's like an iceberg, this guy: you only see 10% of what he does, and the other 90% is hidden away under concrete/paint/drywall/dirt. For example, take this before & after:

living room, January 2007

living room, April 2011

What you see: New paint, new lights, new tchotchkes.
What you don't see: Jared repaired and re-attached the mantel, insulated the attic above the ceiling, took off the trim around the French doors and filled in the gaps around the doors with spray foam, re-attached the trim and patched up the nail holes, re-wired the electricity throughout the room, put in new electrical sockets and patched up the holes from the old ones, removed the light fixture, installed recessed lighting and patched up the hole from the old fixture. . .and a few days after I took this photo, he repainted that white patch (and another half-dozen spots on the hall and living room that needed touch-ups)

In short, I'm sorry, honey, if that last post left you feeling unappreciated. The truth is that I feel oh-so-lucky to have such a capable, generous, hard-working man as my partner in life. Happy Father's Day, hon!