Constructivitis

  "One of the stove burners isn't working."  With that innocuous statement, my wife Helen launched us on a three-and-a-half year trip to hell and back. 

  I didn't realize at the time that she was coming down with a serious case of  constructivitis.  It is a virus-borne illness, usually caught from an aging house.  The symptoms: abnormal ingenuousness and optimism, often crossing into euphoria, stoked by the exuberant visions of architects and contractors.  I should have recognized it: friends of mine had had the affliction, none having had the slightest initial understanding of its virulence.

  Helen and I were living in the only house we ever owned, of mid-1950s vintage, which we bought in the mid-1960s.   It was at this time about 30 years old.  My natural reaction to Helen's announcement was to tell her that I would replace the burner—nothing could be simpler.

  Unfortunately, the virus had already infected her, although she was then showing only minimal symptoms.  It caused her to speculate that, since the kitchen appliances were all three decades old, it might be worth while to replace them.  Because they were built in, removing them would be so destructive that we should probably consider renovating the kitchen altogether.

  My own immune system was still in perfectly good working order.  I suggested that her idea might be a bit of overkill in the face of the failure of a single burner.  She persisted, so in one of those weak moments that make us susceptible to disease, I agreed to hire an architect to advise us on the incipient project

  Those of you who have yourselves succumbed to constructivitis will know what is coming.  The architect pointed out that some of the appliances took up valuable exterior-wall space, blocking a full view of the rear garden—that wall should more naturally be all glass.  Moving the appliances to an interior wall would require closing off the kitchen's door to the living room and redoing its entry to the dining room—that would mean reworking some of both those rooms.  The virus was already establishing its presence outside the kitchen.

  By this point, Helen was feverish.  "Of course!" she said.  "I've never liked the walnut-veneered walls in those other rooms—I'd love plain white walls to display our art on.  And I hate that their doors and windows are framed in aluminum, not wood, and that the floors have rustic planks."  I estimated her temperature to be at 105° and rising.

  Hearing this was a booster shot for my own immune system.  I frenziedly protested that a $25 burner replacement had already escalated in cost by more than a thousand-fold.  (Another symptom of the disease: a great underestimation of potential costs.)  And, I objected, the veneered walls and planked floor ran into the entry foyer, the floor extending beyond that into the hallway to the bathrooms and bedrooms.  The virus, I realized, was being given yet another beachhead.  Unfortunately, Helen was now in delirium, so there was little I could do to stanch the infection.

  We chose one of the architect's plans to renovate the kitchen, living room, dining room and foyer, and to replace the hallway floor, and hired a contractor.  Soon the whole rear of the house was terre interdite; we were reduced to cooking in an electric wok in the downstairs laundry room and using the adjoining family room as a temporary living/dining room.  According to the contractor it was to be for no more than six months, so it seemed not too much of an inconvenience.  (Yet another symptom: a naïve acceptance of contractors' time estimates.)

  By now the virus had indeed spread to rooms abutting the hallway: the aluminum-framed windows in them—in fact those rooms in general—would look very shabby when compared with the rooms under renovation.  A little sprucing up wouldn't hurt them, would it?  And shouldn't my upstairs office and the downstairs family room also be brought up to the new standard?  By then I was frantically searching for a powerful anti-viral spray with which to douse the house, and Helen too.  None was available, so the virus kept efflorescing before my horrified eyes.

  I'll spare you further Dante-esque details of our time in purgatory.  Enough to say that the virus, in successive stages of outbreak, eventually invaded every nook of the house's interior and most of its exterior, including the gardens.  Even I succumbed to it, abetting its spread.   During pretty much all of my daughter's high-school career she rarely had a home not torn up somewhere in which to entertain her friends.

  When the virus eventually played itself out after three-and-a-half years, voila! we had our thoroughly renovated castle—at three to four times the original cost of the house when we bought it.  Helen and I were happy with the result, although much chastened by the purgatorial and fiscal torture.  Fortunately, memories of our trip to the underworld receded into the dim past.  Unlike Persephone, we had eaten no pomegranate seeds whilst there. 

  I still live in that house and love its embrace and the memories of Helen that live with me in it.  I am a bit concerned lately, however, because my architect daughter has been suggesting that, after an additional 25 years, the house needs just a wee bit of grooming.  As an aside, she mentions that I might want to consider installing an elevator to carry me up from the street level to the main living area.

  I am not sure if once having had the virus bestows lifelong immunity.  To be safe, I have been stockpiling modern anti-viral medications and sprays.