Construction in the time of coronavirus

It was difficult to finish building a house during the rainiest February in Nashville's history. Then, it was difficult to finish building a house after a tornado cut a 50-mile trail from West Nashville to Cookeville. But by the end of February, the house was ready for its final inspection, and when our builders arrived at the Codes department to start submitting that paperwork, they found only one employee working; the other four were at home because of the coronavirus. Two days later, the Codes department closed its physical office entirely, moving their operations online. There's no longer a line to stand in to estimate when you might be helped.

To legally move into a new home, you need a use and occupancy letter that declares the building is safe to, well, use and occupy. But what do you do when rain, tornadoes, and pandemics delay that letter indefinitely? Where do you put your cat? Where do you send your mail? And what about a FedEx package? How do you dispose of trash when you don't have an address to submit for trash service? (We tried the public landfill, but even it is closed due to the coronavirus. What other germs are they trying to keep out of a giant pile of garbage?)

First: Have patience. Second: Get creative. Third: Get mad. Fourth: Have patience again.

Someday we will legally live in the house we paid for and built. Until then, I will find doses of normalcy—taking the dog for a walk, taking a nap, listening to the same podcasts episodes over and over again—among the chaos.

The Wheel of Infinite Thanksgiving Anxiety

My friend Polly’s parents' car has a passenger-side dash panel that is always covered in white contact paper. The paper converts the dashboard into a giant sticky note for ideas worth keeping while on a drive: Names and phone numbers you don't want to forget, directions that someone rattles off on the other end of the phone, excerpts from books or the radio. When I visit Polly and her family, I love to read what notes made the dashboard. A few years ago, someone had written “The Wheel of Infinite Thanksgiving Anxiety”—a string of words too juicy not to ask about. (Turns out, it’s all the lead-up headache to holiday gatherings—the cleaning and prepping and cooking and inviting—that can be partially alleviated by ordering a precooked Thanksgiving meal from a restaurant. Polly’s family heard about it on the Sporkful podcast.)

In January, I made my own giant sticky note out of a nine-foot length of thin plywood that someone had laid on our kitchen island. It started as a way to record the name and number of yet another utility employee who seemed to be dragging his feet on finishing a job at the house, but soon it collected punch lists, lumber measurements, and my name in cursive as I wrote it over and over while on the phone, middle school–style. 

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For two years I have kept notes like these to stay organized and motivated as we build our first house. I’ve kept notes on potential mortgage lenders, cost-saving measures, paint swatch names, furniture measurements, and books I have read since we bought land in Nashville (including Beautiful No-Mow Yards, A Pattern Language, and the aggressively titled Avoiding the Con in Construction: How to Plan For Hassle-Free Home Building). But it was the long sheet of plywood that ended up being my most important note. About a month ago, I started writing daily lists of jobs to complete on the plywood. Sometimes, the list was a moonshot; was I really going to “finish the handrail” by 8 PM if I didn’t even know how to finish it at 8 AM? Other days, a list item was blessedly complete before it even got started: Our builder Rick had asked me one day to install the flexible line from the gas hookup to the stove, but when I checked, someone had already done the job for me. And then on particularly difficult days, I wrote down tasks that I had completed earlier in the day just to feel the rush of accomplishment at marking it off. I always invited my dad to mark off the to-do items he completed himself, but I don’t think he ever took me up on it. Maybe list-based euphoria isn't an inherited trait.

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And then, about a week ago, I realized that the to-do lists were done. Even the tasks that I never thought would get marked off—“attach bullnose,” “fill all nail holes”—got their strikethrough. I no longer needed the name and phone number of the gas company engineer, since he had finally shown up to install our gas line. Plus, I could mindlessly write my name on any old surface. 

I picked up the plywood sheet and folded it in half until it cracked into two pieces. Then I folded each of those sheets, breaking them into smaller and smaller pieces until I had a boxful of jagged plywood squares the size of coasters. I set the box next to the fireplace so the scraps would sometime become kindling.

 
 

Yesterday, when I took up the protective paper flooring to clean before moving in this week, I realized that we have other notes in places I didn’t expect: Apparently, when we waxed the concrete floors, we didn’t buff out some of the chalk lines and pencil marks from the early days of framing the house. In our living room, you can see the red chalk lines of a wall from the original house plans that we ultimately scrapped. There are also pencil marks noting where door and window openings would be, and a few accidental footprints from the afternoon when the concrete guys slowly backed themselves off of the slab while smoothing out the surface.

When I saw these yesterday, I was reminded of all the steps it took to build the house that I got to personally witness. I was there when they snapped the chalk lines and marked out door and window openings. I was also there the day some bonehead used a permanent marker instead of a pencil on the finished concrete. Turns out, baking soda and hydrogen peroxide will erase that error.

Maybe the next person who lives in the Dog House won’t like these remnants of construction, but I do. I bet not everyone who rides in Polly’s parents' car wants to know what the Wheel of Infinite Thanksgiving Anxiety is, either. But if you’re curious about anything around our house when you visit, I can probably tell you what it is, why it’s there, and how it works. And if I can’t, I can probably look back through my notes and find the answer.

Stuff

Since we were building such a small house, and I knew I would be taking time off work to be highly involved in construction, I had hoped from the beginning that the project could be a sort of model for how to build ethically. Back when we planned to build the big house first, I had contacted a residential builder who specialized in “green building”—geothermal heating, solar panels, SIPs, that sort of thing—and when we met up at the site, he told me that a lot of construction has already moved toward “green” practices. Low-flow toilets are readily available (too available, if you ask Mark). High-performance insulation is the standard. Most paints are low VOC by design. 

What isn’t the norm, he said, is “greening" the parts of construction that you don’t see as an average homeowner. Yes, you bought a low-flow toilet, but it came wrapped in plastic, then styrofoam, then cardboard. What happens to those materials after the toilet is installed? And what about all the leftover building materials, like the scraps of treated lumber and broken cinder blocks? What ends up in a landfill? The water table? The air?

When our house was being framed and insulated, I pulled up to the site on an icy morning and saw a worker tear off a chunk of foam insulation and use it as kindling to start a fire so he and the rest of the crew could keep warm. I mentioned it to our builder disapprovingly, and he said, “Oh, that’s nothing. The other day I saw a guy start a fire like that and then throw a frozen burrito into it to warm up his lunch.” 

Yesterday we moved out of our temporary apartment and into a temporary hotel. Since we aren’t able to move our belongings into the house yet—we could be fined for occupying the house before receiving our official certificate of occupancy—we had to get creative and complicated: Perishable or breakable kitchen stuff went into the Dog House cabinets in the hopes that an inspector wouldn’t notice, delicate and electronic items went into a climate-controlled storage unit, and heartier belongings went into a POD sitting on our property. I used to pride myself on how little stuff I thought we had, but this past week embarrassed me when I found boxes of belongings that hadn’t been unpacked since we moved out of Bowling Green—four moves ago! Turns out, I’m just a consumer like everyone else.

And that stuff has to go somewhere, even if you make the high-minded decision to live in a 866-square-foot Dog House and downsize. We already owned a second queen-sized mattress with box springs and rails and a headboard; if it wasn’t going to fit in our new home, where else could it go?

The fate of our guest bed is a good example of how difficult it can be to act responsibly as a consumer. Start with the headboard, which was from IKEA and has served us well for five years. However, when we relocated to Nashville, one of the movers broke off one of its two support legs. We tried gluing it back on, but the leg dried crooked and never felt stable enough to reuse. I tried selling it online; I showed it to neighbors and said they could have it for free. Nobody wanted it. So, with four hours left yesterday before I had to turn over the keys to our apartment, my father-in-law and I chucked it into the dumpster. Ten minutes later I saw the garbage truck pull up and gobble the headboard into its belly, off to the landfill to decompose with the other stuff we couldn’t take with us, sell, give away, or simply didn’t need anymore.

As for the mattress and box springs, well, nobody wanted those either. We tried—we really did! I called reuse centers around Nashville, but nobody would take a used mattress. We tried giving it away to neighbors who we thought might trust our hygiene, but they all turned us down. While picking up lunch at McDonalds, I even heard Mark’s dad asking people, “Hey, we’re giving away an immaculate mattress. Do you want it?” Finally, a mattress store told us that they would recycle the mattress and box springs, but it cost $15 per item. Mark’s dad thought he knew someone back in Kentucky who could use the mattress, but when we loaded it onto his truck and started driving down the road, it became clear that hauling it three hours on the interstate would not be safe for the cars behind him. We pulled into Mattress King, paid $30, and dropped the mattress and box springs in their alley, hoping that they would indeed recycle the items and not just chuck them into the landfill with our headboard. 

(By the way, my dad’s new favorite trivia tidbit is that 90% of a mattress is recyclable.)

When it came to the bed rails, Mark’s dad was able to convince a neighbor to take them. He also tried to give her our loveseat, but she said, “No, sorry, I have a thing about used fabrics.” 

So does Goodwill, it turns out. After trying to sell and then give away the loveseat, which admittedly showed signs of use by our dog for the past five years, a Goodwill employee let us offload it but said that in such condition, they were likely just going to throw it away.

I don’t have any thoughts about consumerism that Wendell Berry hasn’t expressed more elegantly. I’ll just say this: When it comes to building a house in a way that meets my personal ethical standards, I don’t know whether I have succeeded or failed. I wanted to source materials from places like Habitat ReStore, but when I needed a certain type of screw at 7 AM, I drove the five minutes to Home Depot instead of the 35 minutes to Habitat. And maybe that’s not such an unethical move after all; is it more environmentally friendly to buy a new item nearby or a used item far away? 

There’s also the trade-off of buying new, energy-friendly materials versus existing, energy-hungry ones. You could ask that question of construction materials, appliances, or even the house itself. Is it better to move into an existing home that is much bigger than we need, one that is poorly insulated and full of inefficient items? Or was building a small house with new materials the right choice?

After a year of asking myself and other people these questions, I still don’t know. The process of moving really forces you to reckon with the footprint of your life, so I guess I'm a little raw and down on myself in the wake of our move yesterday. I know that I want to continue trying to make decisions about our house that align with my values. I want to keep learning how to make better decisions. I will also try to give myself a break, knowing that if I'm asking myself questions like these in the first place, then I’m probably doing okay.

 
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Photo update: Moving out

Suffering through a rainy February, our move-in date has been delayed over and over. Our apartment lease is now up as well, so I'm writing this from our new, temporary lodging at the Home2 Suites, an extended-stay hotel that we can actually see from the Dog House. We'll be here until all of the site work can be completed and final inspections can take place.

In the meantime, here are some photos from the past few weeks. Now we have electric, HVAC, and even an access road to the front door!

This should only be fun

Back last year, when Mark and I were still in Blacksburg and spent our evenings studying updated house plans from our architect, Ryan, we got into some big fights. Rarely were they about the house itself—most of the fights were about more important issues, like how we talk to each other, how we solve problems as a couple, and how we disagree—but many of them ended in one of us saying, "Let's just not do this." 

Looking back, I don't know if either of us were ever serious. We owned the land already; what else would we do with it? In retrospect, I think it was just a way to highlight how miserable we were making each other. It also acted as a reminder of another common saying between us: "This should only be fun." I don't know who said it first, but Mark and I both agreed from the beginning that it's outrageous to get too bent out of shape about the rare privilege to design and build your own house. If the process is going to be so unbearable, why do it in the first place? 

I'd like to think we have made it through construction keeping fun at the forefront. I have even enjoyed some of the more arduous tasks, from cutting down trees and stacking firewood to running buckets of water back and forth from the top of the road to the bathroom to clean grout from the shower tile. After spending several years in grad school, where my job was solely to either write or talk, working with my hands and body for the past six months has been—can you believe it?—pretty fun.

Until recently. I don't know if it's from the schedule delays, caused by the confluence of unreliable subcontractors and unrelenting rain, but I am no longer having fun. I don't look forward to walking into the house. I don't find joy in the work I'm doing. I'm not especially proud of the end result of a lot of the tasks I've completed. I don't want to do this anymore!

But I still show up six mornings a week and put 10 or 12 or 14 hours into projects that must be done. Nail holes need to be filled, whether or not it's fun to putty them. Our loft needs a guard rail, whether or not it's fun to figure out how in the hell to construct a guard rail that will keep a person from falling to their death. I need to trim our pocket doors. The carpet upstairs needs a transitional piece so people don't trip. I dread these tasks. Sometime this week, though, I'm going to do them. 

It was naive to think that building a house would only be fun. A more accurate mantra would have been, "This will only be educational." Because on days when I am low and repeating over and over in my head, "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this," I am learning something—from small things, like the way construction adhesive works, to big things, like how to be more patient and kind with the people who love me. 

This has not been fun. But damn, am I learning a lot.