Rise: How a House Built a Family(60)

“It’s great motivation to get the walls up!” Drew declared. And he was right. Dad helped us mark everything with chalk, altering our plans significantly for the upstairs based on things we’d learned building the first story. Projects always looked a lot different in 3-D. We also found out how difficult it was to line up key upstairs walls over the downstairs counterparts so that plumbing and electrical could run straight down through. This had been easier to draw on paper than it was on plywood with a chalk line, but we eventually managed and started hauling two-by-sixes up, some by the stairs and some over the side of the garage. Each method had supporters, but in the end both were plain old hard work.

“Before we start framing, we have to figure out this final wall in my room.” I pointed to a spot on the subfloor where I imagined that the wall should go. Inkwell Manor had a side-facing garage, and it was a full two stories everywhere except over the half of the garage at the front of the house. This would give the roofline some visual interest and make the house into something other than an enormous box. But even though I had looked through a dozen books and Web sites about building a short knee wall on that end of my bedroom and a steep pitched roof over that part of the garage, I still had no real concept of how to do it.

Dad ran his hand down his face and sat in a lawn chair on the opposite end of the enormous subfloor, so we had to shout a little to hear each other’s pathetic ideas, all starting with “What if” and “Maybe.”

We weren’t making any progress. Finally, Dad lifted his palms in surrender and shrugged his shoulders. “The easiest thing is to just put another room there. You already know how to do that. Frame the walls all the way out and the roof straight across. Put a door in from your room.”

“Another whole room? I don’t really need that.” But I was already making plans for it in my head. “And it will be a lot more expensive to do another whole room.”

“Not really,” Dad yelled. “The steep rafters, extra plywood, and shingles were going to be a lot more expensive, so you’ll save some there. I’ll bet it would be hell to shingle at that angle, too. You’d have to hire someone with a bucket truck. Really it’s just the price of a little extra Sheetrock, flooring, a window or two, and your brick.”

I paced the area that was supposed to be part of the outdoors but just might turn into another part of Inkwell. I wasn’t convinced.

“Either that or hire someone to tell you how to do it the way you planned,” Dad added, going for a wrap on the hard sell.

Pete didn’t really know how to build what I had drawn for him, but said he could probably figure it out. I knew for sure that would cost me more than the windows and Sheetrock for the extra room.

I nodded at Dad, and we finished chalking the lines for walls.

Dad was up and moving around almost as good as new over the next few days. We framed the entire upstairs in a weekend. I renewed my incessant chant of “If it starts to fall, just let it go!” with every exterior wall we raised. My voice was more frantic than ever as I imagined my kids plummeting over the side. Finishing the upstairs was a grand accomplishment, but with sixteen-inch spaces between the studs it wasn’t enough to keep Roman in, so he wasn’t allowed upstairs without holding someone’s hand, not until the plywood was in place. It took only three tries for us to figure out that we couldn’t manage that on our own, so I called Pete back before we headed home late that Sunday.

“Re-Pete can help again, too,” he said.

I hesitated, but decided I could be straightforward, since I was technically the boss. “Re-Pete doesn’t seem to know a lot about building. Seemed more like a gofer than a builder.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “He has a lot to learn. Tell you what. Pay him ten an hour while he’s learning.” Re-Pete was still getting the better deal, but I agreed to the terms, ever optimistic that things would go better than the facts suggested.

Pete and Re-Pete only took a week to get the plywood on the upstairs, which was a record when it normally took me a week to get them to show up. Drew helped them with a lot of it, working after school until dark. If he hadn’t been there pushing them forward and forcing Pete to work while his lips moved, it would have cost me triple in both money and time.

Dad worked from the ground most of the time, drilling holes in plywood and planning new and better ways to get the job done. He spent plenty of time on a ladder, too, and nothing I said would keep him down. “I’m only going up a little ways,” he’d say. “This is nothing. I’m doing fine. MS means I feel like shit if I’m sitting at home or working, so I might as well be working. I rest when I get tired.”

We spent a day cleaning up after the plywood was up and the ladders were happily pulled down for a while. We were eating lunch when a neighbor stopped by with his son. We’d met the son once before, but I couldn’t remember his name and was too embarrassed to ask. The son was looking for work trimming trees, and he wondered if we needed anything tidied up. We didn’t, but they enjoyed looking around the house, so I took them upstairs for a full tour.

“What we need is some help building the rafters. Any chance you know how to do that?” I asked, blinking often to keep the hope from dripping out of my eyeballs and pooling at their feet. They shook their heads in unison—the dad stepping square in a puddle that the son had just sidestepped.