Outside, there’s a skinny guy up on a ladder proving me right.

Charlie and I, like most people, have differences of opinion about how to get things done.  Charlie wants to do everything himself; spending all his time doing things other people could do faster.  He hates wasting money.  I want to sub everything out; spending all my money getting things done faster.  I hate wasting time.

Charlie doesn’t want to waste equity.  I don’t want to get divorced.

“I’d rather pay someone else to do the work while we’re sitting in Starbucks relaxing,” I say.  “You can always make more money but you can’t make more time.  I’d rather not spend any more of my time watching you get injured putting in a window.”

All I heard from him was, “I’ll do it myself.”  I knew I could wear him down.  My first words were, “Me do it myself.”  I figured if I could let go, so could he.  Sometimes it’s good to be exactly alike.  You know how to win him over.

One of Charlie’s Officer buddies came over, looked at the ghetto back end of our house and shook his head.  “That’s a big job,” he said.  “No way could you do that all alone.  We could get a bunch of guys together and do it over a week or two.   Then you can help each of us with our house projects, too.”

I reminded Charlie that one of these guys took seven years to remodel his kitchen.  Another one was working on his backyard fence, broke his trigger finger and couldn’t go into work for a month.  “They’re younger than you,” I remind him.  “They’re always out on sick leave.  They break their shoulders; they get diabetes.  You’re not construction workers.”

I don’t think it would help if I mentioned my ex was a faster fixer-upper than Charlie.  My ex was motivated.  He’d get into trouble; he’d get fired.  We were always moving.  We lived in Boise for 363 days and in Atlanta for 47.  We moved in an out of Montana like illegal immigrants.  You get used to doing things quickly.  You never know when you’ll have to sell.

Come to think of it, I don’t think Charlie would mind.  He’s seen my ex’s carpentry skills.  No matter what your job, you can only focus on two of the three values: time, quantity, or quality.  It isn’t hard to figure out what suffers when you try to get a lot of things done quickly.

My Dad is the king of getting a lot of things done quickly.  He takes the epoxy and duct tape route whenever possible, then covering up the whole mess with paint.  When he steps back to look at a completed project, he says, “That’s good enough.” 

The textured ceiling in his house started falling off in chunks.  Instead of repairing it, he stuck the chunks back up from where they fell.  He didn’t have to point out his repair work when people looked up.  Even Ray Charles could see what he did.

The first day on the market, he got a full price offer for his house.  The new owners were so rushed to get such a good deal they didn’t have time to look up.  The home inspector did, and my Dad ended up paying quite a bit for someone else to remove the ceiling texture, epoxy and all.

If you do a job and it looks like crap, people think, “If it looks awful where I can see, how awful is it where I can’t?”  You’re better off getting a professional the first time, rather than getting a professional to do it over.

The real problem is that, unlike my Dad and my ex, Charlie doesn’t do crappy work.  Where my Dad is the epoxy king, you look at Charlie’s crown molding and suspect he doesn’t own a tube.  When you looked my ex’s work, you’d think, “It’s nice but something’s wrong somehow.”  When Charlie finishes something, it’s better than what he planned.  He modifies midstream and it works. 

“Why don’t you do the pretty things and sub everything else out?” I ask.

Charlie agrees to start with the siding.  He called all over and got a few quotes a month ago.  He got discouraged when they all wanted a ton of money and couldn’t start right away.  He called one more contractor. 

This guy gave him a cheap quote and wanted to start at the end of the week.  I did the hard work and wrote him a check.  He got delayed with a tile job, but came over this morning and got started.  It’s almost done.

Charlie couldn’t believe it.  “You worked all by yourself?” Charlie said.  “That would have taken me a month.”  Or two, or three, I think to myself.

“You want me to replace the window while I’m up here?”

“Sure,” Charlie said.  “I’ll help you bring it up.”

The guy’s phone rings.  He’s up on a ladder twenty feet off the ground, holding a window.  He talks and laughs like he’s watching TV.  “No doubt,” he says.  “Later.”

He takes less than five minutes to pop in the window.  Charlie comes down and tells me, “Installing that window would have taken me half a day.”

We walk around to the front yard and see Jenn coming home from work.  “Look,” she says.  “White pizza.  My specialty.”

She holds a chinet plate full of hot white food.  It smells really good.

“I made it at work.  You never starve when you’re a cook,” she says.  “The unsinkable Molly Brown, my boss, saw it and wanted some.  She sucked it down fast and said, ‘That’s really good.  We should sell this.’

“I told her all the things I could make when she hired me.  I have experience; I’m a good worker.  Better than her, that’s for sure. 

“I told her, ‘Too late now,’ and gave my two weeks’ notice.  I’ve never worked at a place so back-asswards.”

She went inside, sat on the couch and started watching a “Law and Order” rerun.

I walked over to my Jeep and started pulling out all stuff I collected in there during the day.  Charlie stopped in the middle of the cul-de-sac, got down on his knees and bowed down in my direction, right to the ground.

“You were right,” he said.  “You were completely right.  That siding alone would have taken me all summer.  I’ll never doubt you again.”

“Oh yes you will,” I said.  “But I’ll remind you.  Now get up before the neighbors see.”

My work is done.

A little help? [] 6:07:19 PM