2002-09-09 - 5:14 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Daydream Believer", The Monkees

So, you've heard me mention before that the house needs a lot of cosmetic work. Not just because things are old, which they are, but because even the new things were done very, very badly. Here's the list (which is by no means exhaustive):

The old things:

- The HVAC is so old it basically does not work. I have no idea how the family got through last summer.

- The wallpaper in the bathrooms, besides being hideously ugly, is dried out and peeling at the edges.

- The sink faucets are old and ugly, and one is even covered with green (not mold; it's a chemical reaction). Must be a copper faucet.

- The carpet is worn and dirty

- The exterior paint around the windows is sloppily done, with lots of mistake brushings on the windows themselves.

- The laminate kitchen counter has seams in it, and they weren't well-sealed, so they've just collected dirt for years.

- The "baseboard" between the bottom of the kitchen cabinets and the floor is made of cheap "wood-look" material that doesn't match the wood of the cabinets themselves. The cabinets are hung crookedly too (Poindexter says this is easy to fix).

The "new things"

- The hardwood floors have been sanded, but not refinished. A closer look at the sanding reveals gouges all over the floor, where the sander was used improperly

- The brand-new whole-house paint job, a very light yellow, was done without any prep work to the wall. There are nails and drywall tape protruding all over the place. No care was taken to protect trim, so there are brushing mistakes on that. Some of the recessed lighting -- including the BULBS -- was sprayed with paint.

OK, now. I've told you all this. Now let me tell you what we found out when we talked to the neighbors.

A while ago, somebody had their exterior trim painted. A bunch of other people on the street (it's a small homeowner's association) got together and got a group rate to get their trim painted too. They told the geezer about it. Was he interested? No. He wanted to do it himself.

So he did, HANGING OUT THE WINDOWS and painting the trim.

He didn't just paint the exterior trim. He "painted" the inside of the house. He "sanded" the floors. He "installed" the entire kitchen after a fire.

HE DID IT ALL *HIMSELF*.

"Ain't nothin' handy 'bout THAT man."

I don't think he actually lacked money. He just chose not to spend it. People who need money do not purchase a house in another state and leave their former home empty for seven months, paying exorbitant taxes and insurance on a home they're not using, while offers are made that are more than twice what was paid for the house.

His penny-pinching wasn't limited to home repairs, either. During the big "blizzard" in January of 1996, Philadelphia got 36 inches of snow. There was so much that the folks on my street (which is a sort of dead end) didn't have anyplace to put the snow they were shoveling (there are no "front yards" in Center City -- there's the street, the sidewalk, and your house). So the group got together and hired a crew to clear out the snow from their street, and they all got out and helped the crew shovel the snow.

All of them, except the geezer. He refused to contribute. "I don't use the street," he said. His car was in the garage, and I suppose there must've been at least a footpath out to the public street, so he didn't need it, and he wasn't going to pay.

They ended up piling a bunch of snow in front of his house. MY house. HA!

The common refrain among everyone who knows the geezer seems to be, "He's a nice guy, he just ..."

Of course, some of the fun of ridiculing the geezer's cheapness is ruined by the fact that he's fitting a stereotype. Sigh. Freakin' stereotypes. I hope you all know me well enough by now to know that my reflections on the geezer are not anti-semetic, they are anti-cheapness.

So, with that in mind, I want to talk about the mezuzot in the house.

I mentioned in an earlier entry that I thought they were cool, and wanted to keep one even though I am neither Jewish nor religious. I just like them, and I like that they are part of the history of the house. The geezer and his family are Israeli, and I am politically very pro-Israel, and my high school boyfriend was born in Israel, and I like tradition, so.

Unfortunately, since this is the geezer we're talking about, none of his mezuzot are worth keeping. Here is my favorite, the brown plastic four-inch mezuzah with paint splotches:

This one was on the doorway leading to one of the bedrooms, and is more evidence of the geezer's lack of care during his paint job. He couldn't even be bothered to cover up the mezuzot so they wouldn't get messed up during painting. Sigh. (See here for eight pages of what mezuzot can look like when they're not cheap brown plastic.)

It's SUCH a cheap thing that I opened it up to find out if there was actually a scroll in it (wondering all the while if this was a horribly sacrilegeous thing to be doing). The scroll can cost $20 or more. Well, there's something parchment-looking in there that's rolled up, taped, and has Hebrew written on it, so I assume that's it. My guess is that the scroll was so freakin' expensive, the geezer wasn't spending any more money than absolutely necessary on the mezuzah case itself. Good golly. I'm going to keep the scroll but find myself a new case. I happened upon a small store display of some very pretty ones, so I'll look for one there.

And finally, for those of you keeping track, here is a "during" picture of the guest bathroom. There is still some backing on the ceiling (it's light brown), but the walls are mostly wallpaper-free. Makes a big difference from before, dunnit?

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