Pride Of Workmanship

When one finally retires from wage-earning the pursuit of other interests can take pride of place. For some people it's golfing, with unrestricted time to pursue that boring game. For others it may be anything from learning ballroom dancing, to producing your own pottery, to lending as much time as ever was desired to gardening. For many others leisure time to pursue activities formerly denied by press of time and the working imperative, it can be lending oneself to charity work.

For someone like my husband who has always had a keen interest in art and design, building and cabinetry, the future of retirement promised endless time to indulge in all of his passions. And over the years he's done just that, not that while he was gainfully employed he didn't plunge himself into many projects over the years, from pencil-sketching, to stained-glass work, to building traditional armoires and finishing recreation rooms in the various homes we occupied.

This, our latest and last home has become his focus of interest. For the first five of our years living in this house he undertook a great many changes while still working full time. From installing French doors side-by-side to separate two rooms, to creating full-window stained glass landscapes and painting scenic landscapes on canvasses, large and small. During the ten following years of retirement his ambitions enlarged to encompass greater renovations.

So it was that he excavated a mightily huge area in the front of our house to design and implement plans to create two piazzas of interlock, brick and stone. Deigning not to resort to the use of electric saws he painstakingly cut every brick and stone to fit by hand, using an old-fashioned set of stone-cutter's tools.

He undertook to refashion our kitchen by deconstructing it through the removal of the existing countertops, and building them anew of superior materials before laying down ceramic tile on the floors and walls of our laundry room, breakfast room, kitchen and powder room which also had its countertop replaced by one of his own devising.

In our master bathroom he removed all of the original ceramic tile and replaced it with marble tiles, applying the marble to shower and tub-surrounds, floor and walls, floor to ceiling. Also replacing the double sinks, countertops, light fixtures. He pulled up the wall-to-wall carpeting in our bedroom and replaced it with strip flooring, did the same in the hallways, the library.

He had already installed a powder room in the basement, before he finished two large rooms, one to serve as a study, the other as a large studio. The larger of the two floored in ceramic tile, the smaller in wood oak parquet, while the powder room, comprised of a separation between toilet and sink area, was floor-tiled as well as halfway up the wall - before retirement.

His latest project is the ancillary full bath on the second floor, used as a guest bathroom. A nice enough and utilitarian room, but uninspired and insipidly unaesthetic to his critical eye. A month ago he undertook to remove the counter over the vanity, and replaced it with his own designed and built product, then commenced to cover it with inch-square quartz tile. He then alternated the quartz with matching one-foot-square marble tiles.

Moving right along and prepared to do some of the electrical work in the bathroom, he was a little surprised and no little disgusted to discover the short-cuts taken by whoever installed the electrical fixture in that bathroom, and he bought some more upgraded bits to ensure that the new fixture he is installing is up to standards.

It’s amazing how many little secrets in short-runs manifest when one undertakes such work. What obviously is indicated here is the cut-throat competition involved in securing contracts by the trades when houses are being built in a tract situation. The contracts are always awarded to the short-bidders, those who undercut their rivals, presenting bids that fall short of what it would cost to do a decent job.

And of course the successful contractor then has to look around for means by which he can make up the difference. Using inferior materials and inferior methods of installation gains him an obvious advantage. At the same time disadvantaging the prospective owner of the newly-built house.

The construction firm doesn’t much care, since it’s unlikely these short-falls will ever be discovered, other than in the event, such as has happened with us, when remodelling or reconstruction takes place to reveal that all is not quite what it should be. And since that is always some time away off in the future, long beyond the time that the construction company has offered to guarantee his end-product, no concerns are perceived. It’s the way of the world.

Pride in workmanship and accomplishment of the task at hand are no longer the prevailing mode. Ever since the ‘bottom line’ became the yardstick by which all such things are measured. Under-servicing a customer is no longer an issue, since most people have long since given up such expectations they may once have harboured, of receiving full value for whatever funds they expend to acquire objects which the manufacturer has ensured have a relatively short life-span, ensuring also that the need to replace them becomes imperative within shorter and shorter time spans.

Instead of rebelling against such environmentally disastrous, let alone consumer-deleterious practises, we meekly accept these things as the way business is done. Boycotting producers and manufacturers on the basis of built-in obsolescence, when we know they could do a whole lot better just isn’t an issue; people living busy lives simply aren’t available to, or interested in a civic project that could have wider ramifications in the way we accept the status quo.

And the purpose of this little treatise is....?