A friend, who I’d not spoken to in a few years, phoned and asked how the new house build was coming along. I looked out the kitchen window. To an old garden shed repurposed as the everything shed. I took a deep breath. “Are you still there?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “Just.”
回到城市,在我们的房舍a postage stamp yard redeemed by its cinder-block double garage, is where the story begins. In the early years of home ownership, I’d marvel at my good fortune in having a good-sized garage downtown in a city of three million.
The garage held four bicycles, four motorcycles, an old VW GTI, an even older VW bus, and a folding motorcycle trailer. Plus tools, a bench grinder, a table saw, a compressor, three ladders, gardening tools and a bag or two of potting soil that invariably spilled its contents onto riding boots, micrometers, or a motorcycle chain.
If one thing in the garage was out of place, nothing could be put in its place. As the years passed, I longed for a workshop that wasn’t required to house the detritus of everyday life. Into Google I’d type the words “motorcycle garage with space to turn around,” or “workshop where a man could leave a half-finished project on a stand and go to bed without worrying that his illegally parked car in the laneway will be susceptible to an $8o ticket.”
Google, only too happy to confirm my garage didn’t measure up, furnished me with photographs of mezzanine-topped garages with Zagato-bodied 1950s Maseratis next to four-piped 1970s MV Agustas and bevel-drive Ducatis. And oil changes on the bus would be so much easier with that car lift. And here was a workspace with a La Marzocco espresso machine. To think I’d once been satisfied carrying coffee out to the garage from the house. That settled it. We were moving to the country and building a house near twisty roads, and ski hills, and mountain biking, and lakes so clear you could see fish swimming 20 feet down. And, above all, I’d finally have my workshop.
Out came the graph paper, pencils, and rulers. Over red wine and late nights, a 1,400 square-foot mid-century modern inspired house was designed with a modest two-bay garage tucked neatly under the eaves. And around the other side of the house would be a black anodized garage door with frosted glass that led to a workshop with a motorcycle lift, a metal lathe, and a pair of eight-foot-long workbenches. We sold our house in the city, bought a piece of land at the base of a hill, and set about the building of our own little Shangri-La.
Permits were procured, drawings were commissioned, specialists were consulted, and surveys stuck brightly colored sticks into the mud. Our house was to be on one level, and to keep the budget modest, the sort of architectural eye-candy you find inDwellmagazine was assiduously avoided. There would be no floating live-edge metal walls lightly stained with a dusting of rusting patina or 12-foot windows that cantilevered into the forest. Drywall and standard-sized windows it would be. And I’d do much of the finishing work myself, saving further money.
然后我们得到了成本估算的建设者. After the meeting I went back to our rented condo and spent the rest of the day in bed. Our modest house in the country, that was supposed to deliver us from the financial stresses of urban life, was, instead, going to saddle us with a massive mortgage for life. And for a good chunk of the afterlife, too. The per-square-foot building cost we’d often been quoted was not a number tethered to reality. It was as if we’d tried to build a house on Mars. Gutted, we pulled the plug on the build.
We sold the land, rolled the blueprints for the house back up and slid them into the cardboard tube, extended the rental on the storage facility, and began looking for a house to buy. Within a month or so we found a 1950s bungalow with good bones and a history of slapdash renovations. It required a gutting and total rebuild—which I would do myself. It had an attached single garage, but alas, we had to annex it for more living space as the house was just too small otherwise.
With a crowbar in hand and my glasses fogged by my dust mask, I stumbled out into the summer heat. I’d spent a week removing razor-sharp metal-reinforced drywall two and three layers deep and tossing it into a dumpster. My arms were the color of a cadaver excepting where rivulets of blood soaked through the dust. I looked to the sad-sack garden shed, with its mismatched doors and leaking roof, and thought back to the double garage I’d once owned and had given up to move here. Things had not worked out.
Perspective. It’s hard to find, especially in the darkest moments. But as the renovation moved on, and despite relapses of regret as further issues with the house were discovered, I grew attached to the little bungalow. We bought it on the eve of the pandemic, before prices skyrocketed—six months after its purchase we wouldn’t have been able to afford it. And our house is on one of the most desirable streets in the area. In the long run, once renovations are complete, it’ll be worth more than the house we didn’t build. Sooner or later, the value of the house will keep me off the streets. That’s not a quip. That’s fact.
My wife claims someday we’ll build a garage and that I’ll have a workshop. Not like the one we were going to build, but a scaled-down version. I’m not so sure. For the cost of the new septic system, I could have bought an R1250 GS Adventure, disassembled it, and had every single component gold plated. (Including the seat, windshield, and wiring.) And every time we’re poised to get a leg up financially, a tree needs to be removed or an appliance fails. If you have a house, my father used to say, you always have something to do.
I write this on the first day of spring. The sun is out, the snow is nearly gone, and the birds are causing a ruckus. Last fall I put a new roof on the shed, fixed the doors, replaced a window, wired it for power, and gave it a coat of paint. It’ll have to do. And I’m thankful for it, and that I’m fortunate enough to have a motorcycle to put in it.
For me, images from war-torn Ukraine have been a head-shaking wake-up call for my own self-entitlement. I have food. I have shelter. I have a wife who loves me. (Who will love me even more once I’ve completed tiling the kitchen.) We ask for so much, for too much. I’ve moved on from wanting a workshop—I’m not the first person to do brake jobs in the driveway. But should I ever get a workshop, or a garage, one thing will be certain. I’ll appreciate it as if it was sent to me from beyond the stars. And that’s more than I could ever—should ever—ask for.
