At some point in life, it’s time to move to Highland Park. The resort-worthy public pool, the tennis courts, the friendly police. But then you get a letter from the Dallas Central Appraisal District with your new property tax assessment, and the shock precipitates the need for a change of underwear. But fresh start!
Say you bought a “fixer-upper.” And say that such purchase coincides with a global pandemic, skyrocketing lumber prices, supply chain disruptions, and a scarcity of subcontractors, because everyone and his grandmother are renovating. And say that the swooning stock market shaves one-third off the value of your nest egg, and opening your monthly brokerage statement has the same shock effect as that DCAD letter, underwear and all.
So some economizing is in order.
You have hand tools. You can measure once and cut twice. You take it upon yourself to hang towel bars and toilet paper holders. I mean, it’s not like you’re hanging a gold-plated toilet paper holder at Mar-a-Lago, right? So you start with the one for the master bath on the second story, over the newly paneled library. If that wasn’t foreshadowing enough, there’s this: Highland Park now requires all new or newly renovated houses to have a “fire-suppression system”—meaning a mosaic of sprinklers in every ceiling in your house.
Sitting on your toilet, you wave your hand sideways to determine the optimal spot for the paper holder. The wall is Sheetrock, so you need to sink an anchor bolt, requiring a 3/8-inch drill bit. The first hole goes in smoothly. The second, a mere inch away, hits a stud, so you put your shoulder into it until the drill hits a hollow? Baffled, you pull the drill out—and a jet of water sprays you in the face. Your mind can’t process water shooting out of your wall. It’s as gobsmacking as if you stepped out of the shower and Queen Elizabeth was standing there, holding your towel.
The panic is instant. The jet of water is shooting out at least 8 feet. You run downstairs screaming to shut off the water to the house. Your wife goes to the garage and executes flawlessly. Nothing changes. It’s the GD fire-suppression system! You run back upstairs to try to corral the flood back into the bathroom with all the towels in the house while you jab at your phone to call the jokers who installed the system, but your fingers are wet and the screen won’t work.
Your wife shouts from downstairs that water is coming from the ceiling into the library. You rush back down the stairs again, and the part of your mind not consumed by panic wonders how many steps you’re logging on your Fitbit.
The library is a sight to behold. Water streams from the light fixtures. Dark seams appear in the Sheetrock, and the ceiling starts to sag. Your wife has the presence of mind to call the contractor, who, after all you’ve paid him, is smart to rush over. He is able to shut off the fire-suppression system, and the rain stops—but no rainbow appears. He has brought a shop vac, and you vacuum up the half inch of water on your new wood floor, while your boys help the contractor and your wife carry the furniture out of the room.
End result? The entire ceiling has to be taken down, re-Sheetrocked, and repainted. Wood paneling buckled. Furniture stained. Hundreds of books, ruined. The floor needs to be sanded, restained, and resealed. Insurance deductible: $10,000.
Painful lesson learned? That a gold-plated toilet paper holder would have been far cheaper? Nope. Rather, even more economizing is now necessary. Those towel bars ain’t gonna hang themselves.
This story ran in the September issue of D Magazine. Write to [email protected].
