Ask and you shall receive--eventually

The home improvement saga goes on

I woke up happy this morning. I slept almost eight hours, and half my deck is finished. The deck guys are not coming today, so I have my privacy back. The sun rose with a swirl of pink and blue. Life is good.

It has not always been so lately. Last week, the deck guys went away when I wasn’t looking, leaving me with concrete blocks sticking up like tombstones out of a black plastic graveyard and no way to get into my hot tub.

All I did was go out to lunch.

Let’s backtrack. A week ago, I posted about how I fell for a pitch from a well-dressed, smooth-talking guy who made me feel so good I wrote him a $7,500 check, half the price, right then to replace my aging deck.

When the guys from “Deliverance” arrived two and a half days late, looking like they couldn’t build a doghouse, I began to get nervous. I watched them rip the old deck apart with a crowbar. They rested a lot, one of them smoked, and they displayed an awful lot of butt cheeks when they bent over.

I felt a little better when another guy, a giant strong enough to lift a whole deck by himself, came on the third day to help. But progress was slow. They arrived late and left early, and I still couldn’t walk out my kitchen door without falling into the graveyard.

On Wednesday, I went to Off the Hook for a chicken sandwich and fries and came home to find nothing happening. No men, no truck, no more work done.

I paced the graveyard, finding a paper clip and a rabies tag from when my dogs were puppies.

I texted the boss. Are your guys coming back? At 4 p.m., he told me they had ordered the wrong size boards and could not continue until the right ones arrived. On Friday. Which meant the deck would remain unfinished over the weekend.

I went around slamming things with my fists for a while. I texted the boss that I was not happy with all these delays. He said was sorry.

I took to the mint chocolate chip ice cream with a big spoon.

Then I had a thought and sent another text. If you could just get me into my hot tub . . .

We can do that, he replied.

On Friday, the workers returned with the boss. They still arrived late and left early, but they installed the lower deck boards all the way up to the hot tub and framed most of the upper deck. I think they got the message that they had an unhappy customer.

There were worrisome moments. I saw the big guy talking on the phone and thought there might be another problem. I watched him blow snot out of his nose onto the grass, wiping the spray off his T-shirt. Three times. The boss asked me to pay some of the balance on my fee early because supplies cost more than he expected. He assured me the final amount would not change. Yeah, right, I thought, but I wrote the check and transferred funds to cover it.

When they all drove away, I climbed onto the lower deck and stretched out in the sun. Ahhhh. I brought out my guitar and played for a while on my new deck. And yes, I soaked in my hot tub.

The decks are not complete. I still can’t go out my sliding door from the kitchen. There are steps to be installed and finish work to be done around the edges. The boss assured me it would all be done on Monday. I believe him.

My decks are going to be beautiful. Before the weather turns, I will throw a deck party and invite all my friends. We will eat, play music, and splash around in the hot tub. We will laugh about the difficulty of finding good help in small towns on the Oregon Coast.

Please God, let it be so. And let me have the courage to actually throw a party. Hosting by myself stresses me out. We’ll talk about this in future posts.

I made this happen all by myself. Would getting work done be any different if I didn’t live alone? I don’t think so. An argumentative husband would make things worse. A housemate who didn’t argue would have the same experience I’ve been having. There would just be two of us getting upset. Plus, I’d have to share my ice cream.

Instead, I share my stories with you and get kisses and tail wags from the neighbor’s dogs, Winnie the Corgi and Bobo the Lab.

I’ve got to get me another dog. I can, once the deck is done.

There’s always something. The new mattress that was supposed to arrive in two weeks is not coming now for almost a month. The insurance lady making sure my homeowner policy was not canceled seems to have ghosted me. I haven’t ordered a new refrigerator yet. The old one that flooded the kitchen is limping along, still keeping stuff cold.

I should have gotten my gas fireplace cleaned and inspected by now.

The bathtub faucet is dripping.

I did get the car serviced. She runs beautifully. Score one for me.

I don’t need a roommate or another husband; I need a caretaker who deals with all of this stuff while I play the piano, write poems, peddle my books, and loll in the sun.

Lessons learned?

• Speak up for yourself, but be reasonable. Beat-up old guys need to earn a living, too. If the job takes a while, it takes a while.

• Think about what you really need and ask for that. What I really needed was to get into my hot tub to ease my back and help me sleep. With that very specific request, I got action.

• Document everything in case there’s a problem.

• My mattress will come when it comes.

• One thing at a time, we can do it.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me. Feel free to share your own home repair experiences, good and bad.

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How did I end up alone? I didn’t have any kids. After my husband and I retired to the Oregon coast, far from family, he died of Alzheimer’s. You can read our story in my new memoir, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, available now at your favorite bookseller. Visit https://www.suelick.com for information on all of my books.