Remodeling at Midlife

I blame my current marital mood (and perhaps the majority of my marital woes) on the older version of the PBS home repair show Hometime, the cousin to the more famous This Old House.  We watched both shows in the first years of our marriage in the late 80's and early 90's.

The two shows have much in common; back in those days, we would watch the shows and dream of the time when we could work on home projects together.  Hometime showed a couple whom we assumed were married.  Each week, Dean and Jo Jo took on a variety of projects as they improved a house. 

The show never showed the couple fighting.  Like This Old House, Hometime never showed the mistakes.  We never saw tile after tile snapping in the wrong place.  We never saw someone glue their shorts to the parquet floor as they sat trying to slide parquet into place.  We never saw fierce battles or the piercing exhaustion that comes as one tries to do a project--and all the gods help you if it's a whole house remodel.

As soon as we could, our younger selves bought their first house.  It was a VA repo, and it needed a bit of work.  And then through the same VA repo program, we found a larger house that was even cheaper, so we bought that too.  And then we almost lost ourselves and our marriage to the home repairs.

Eventually we learned to work with our strengths and around our deficits.  But now, midlife has introduced some interesting changes to our home repair, as midlife introduces so many changes to so many aspects of life.

We now have more money than we had when we were young, and we have more options than we did when we were young.  In our younger years, we went to the home repair store and we had a limited number of choices when it came to flooring or paint colors.  Now, because of global trade and because of more money, the choices are dizzying.  And now that we know about those options, I do wonder if humans are likely to be less satisfied with their choices.

My spouse still wants to do our own home repairs to try to create the vision he has in his head.  I would prefer to pay others to do that.  I have never had the skills that he's had to do the home repairs.  And there's the matter of time.  In our younger years, I didn't have to be on campus 45 to 60 hours a week, the way I do now, along with 10-20 hours of work required for online classes; I simply have less time to do these repairs.

Midlife introduces the diminishing of abilities for both of us.  This Old House shows all sorts of older craftsmen (and yes, I'm using that gendered term consciously).  They don't stand up carefully because of screaming joints.  They don't squint through their glasses and make mistakes because their old eyes can't see as well.

Those home repair shows never show the stress of living in the same place where the repairs are happening--maybe because people in those shows aren't doing that.  Those shows don't show the moments where householders look at each other and wonder if they ever had anything in common.  My books have been packed away for 2 years, and I miss them viscerally.  My spouse assumes that if I haven't needed them in 2 years, why keep them?

I am assuming that at some point our current Great Shelving Project will be over, and marital peace will return.  I want to hang onto the marital peace, so I am often hesitant to take on new projects.  My spouse always has visions in his brain that he wants to try to bring to life.  I wish that he could remember that my capacity to be part of bringing the vision to life will be limited.