Jen Lancaster - If You Were Here

On the plus side, I’m so glad we brought Tracey, because now we’re not buying a house that can’t be made tasteful.

The downside is, we won’t have a pool or a pond, and either one would have been good for me.

“Anything worth noting today?”

I say nothing, choosing only to grit my teeth in response.

“That bad?” Mac asks gently. I’ve just come in the back door from an entire day spent up in the Cambs.

While Mac’s at work, I’ve been tasked with running real estate recon missions. During the week it’s my job to weed out the stinkers so he doesn’t have to spend his weekends grimacing at faux-wood paneling and unfinished basements. I’m fine with the arrangement, because I have a looming deadline, which means I want to do anything except what I’m supposed to be doing.

The truth is that the places I saw weren’t so awful today — at least comparatively — provided one has a deep and abiding love for mauve paint, gold faucets, and flood damage. At the moment, my glowering is due less to the fruitless search and more because of what I catch him doing. He’s standing over the stove massacring thirty dollars’ worth of fresh ingredients from Whole Foods in an attempt to make dinner.

A few weeks ago, while we were at the market, I spotted a jar of herbs and sauce called Bush’s Chili Magic Chili Starter. I launched my body in front of it, hoping Mac wouldn’t notice, but I was too slow. He grabbed it, announcing, “Let’s make 2010 the year I learn to master chili!” just as I was thinking, Let’s make 2010 the year you stop trying to master chili. I realize some wives would love it if their husbands took the initiative to cook dinner, but perhaps they don’t realize they’d have to eat whatever their husbands make. 48Because I hate the idea of wasting food — or hurting his feelings — I always choke down whatever he serves.

I take off my coat and come over to kiss him. Then I sneak a glance into the saucepan. I’m no chili aficionado, but I’m pretty sure it’s never supposed to be that color.

“See anything worth noting today?” he inquires.

“Sort of,” I say, grabbing a glass of wine from the fridge. I’m having chardonnay, not so much because I need a drink, but more because I’m hoping the oak resin will set up a Flavor Protection Perimeter between my tongue and his chili. (I also keep a secret stash of peanut-butter-filled pretzels in my desk for nights Mac cooks dinner.)

I take a deep, protective swig before continuing. “The place on Goldenmill had a Liberace bathroom.”

Before I continue, here’s where I need to apologize to everyone who’s ever prompted me to roll my eyes on HGTV. I always get so mad at the people who can’t see past the aesthetics of a place, but it turns out that’s easier said than done. Sometimes when I spot something so blatantly hideous, like fake bamboo wallpaper or one of those knit toilet-paper holders topped with a doll’s torso, I question all the homeowners’ decisions, starting with the one to buy this particular house. I mean, a tufted silk ceiling is one thing, but a sad clown painted on velvet? No.

He glances up from his simmering pot of unpleasantness. “Meaning?”

“Meaning the bathroom was mirrored everywhere, and I’m not kidding. I’m talking on the ceiling, on the back of the door, on the vanity, and on the floor. Plus there was a rounded wall, and in the curve there were about twenty long, narrow strips of mirror. Topping it all was a gigantic mirrored chandelier.”

At that point in the day, I’d had about six lattes, so I ended up needing to use that bathroom. I now know what I look like while taking a leak from fourteen different angles. I kept swinging my head around so I wouldn’t make eye contact with myself, but no luck; I was everywhere. FYI? There’s some stuff you just can’t unsee.

“Nice.” He stirs his pot, and then licks the spoon when he’s done. Did he just wince? Yeah. That bodes well. “What about the Cape Cod on Foxfield? I took the virtual tour and it seemed right up our alley.”

“They must have shot the MLS listing photos while lying on the ground or something. The bedroom ceilings were so slanted I couldn’t stand upright. A place like that would require major reconstruction.” I rub the sore spot on my forehead. I hope the sellers aren’t too mad I dented their wall with my face.

“Then maybe renovations should be an option,” he says, dumping a handful of salt into his bubbling potion. I shudder inadvertently. “If it means we get a bigger house or a better neighborhood, we should consider expanding our search to rehab properties.”

Ack, the rehab-versus-redecorate discussion. This has been our perpetual “tastes great”—versus—“less filling” argument, and it’s the biggest reason we’re still in a rental house. He’s dying to take something down to the studs, while I’m really confident in our ability only to switch outlet covers and paint trim.

Seriously, every time he says the R-word I can’t help but recall the time we bought our new chandelier for the dining room. Mac was convinced he could install it himself despite having never done so before, and even though the instruction sheet from Pottery Barn clearly stated, You should really call a professional for this; no, really, we mean it.

To his credit, he was able to manage the assembly and the mounting of the fixture. After it went up and he went to the basement to flip the breaker, I was awed by how merrily the chandelier twinkled for six whole seconds before the switch plate sparked and we lost power in half the house.

The best part was when Mac tried to get the electrician to convince me of what a good job he’d done up until the part where he almost started an electrical fire. The electrician agreed, saying that if indeed Mac had realized we had a triple rather than a double switch, he’d have done everything right. And yet as I wrote out the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar time-and-a-half check for the repair, I failed to recognize this victory.

As Chandeliergate 2008 is still a sore point around here, I don’t bring it up. Instead I say, “I thought we agreed renovations would be too troublesome. I mean, I want to put my mark on a place, but I had new paint and carpet in mind, maybe a little crown molding. Possibly some light cabinet hardware shopping.”

An oddly determined look crosses his face. “Listen, we’ve spent every Saturday for the last year watching HGTV. What they do only looks difficult. Do you know how easy it is to rehab a bathroom if you’re just swapping vanities and exchanging fixtures? Most of the work comes from the teardown, and I can swing a sledgehammer and rewire an electrical panel. The only hard part’s moving pipes, and we can outsource that to a professional.”

“You spend one high school summer working in a lumberyard and all of a sudden you’re Bob Vila?”

He wipes his hands on a dish towel and begins to ladle out our dinner. “No, I’m saying we’re capable of doing more than you’d guess.”

I mull this over while collecting napkins, spoons, and enough bread and butter to absorb the taste of our dinner. When he’s finished preparing our bowls, he sits down across from me and places his hand over my left hand. “Promise me you’ll at least consider our buying a rehab.”

I glance down at the gelatinous blob in my bowl and I cross the fingers on my right hand under the table. “If we can’t find a house that’s move-in ready, then yes, I promise.”

And I mean it. Mostly.

Yet there’s a part of me that also recalls spending a year of Sundays watching the Food Network. For all our copious research, I’m still about to eat a bowl of blue stew.

We’ve officially looked at every move-in-ready house in Abington Cambs.