The last coat of stain was still tacky on the porch railing when I stepped back to look at it. Eight months. Every Saturday and most Sundays from April through December, driving forty-two minutes each way with lumber strapped to the roof rack and a cooler of sandwiches on the passenger seat. The cabin had been nothing when I bought it at a county tax sale for fifty-two thousand dollars. A two-bedroom shell with a sagging dock and a kitchen that smelled like raccoon. But I could see it. I could see what it would be.
And now it was finished. The railing was straight. The dock held weight. The bathroom had hot water for the first time in six years. I had sanded every floor by hand because the rental sander shorted out on the second day, and I could not afford another one until the next paycheck. I tiled the kitchen backsplash with ceramic I found on clearance, forty cents a square foot, cutting each piece on a wet saw I borrowed from the school custodian. The porch boards were pressure-treated pine I stained three coats over three weekends. The dock pilings I replaced by wading into the lake in July with a crowbar and a prayer, pulling the rotted posts out and sinking new ones with a post driver I rented by the day. Eight months of weekends and eighteen thousand dollars in materials and the hired labor for the plumbing and electrical I couldn’t do myself. Every other nail, every other screw, every other coat of finish was mine. My hands, my weekends, my money from a cafeteria manager’s salary that left me two hundred dollars a month after bills, if I didn’t eat out.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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