Madame Bizarro World

We’ve lived in this house for exactly 20 years and 1 month (not counting the 4-5 months I lived in an apartment by myself, but that’s a whole other story). It was built by a less-than-reputable builder, Nash Phillips/Copus Homes or NPC. Back while this subdivision was being built but before I’d heard of it, I was dating a guy whose mom lived in a fairly nice neighborhood in the south part of the city…why am I being coy? If you know who or what NPC Homes was, you’ll know where I am, so what the hell. In South Austin, off of William Cannon. This boyfriend was the first person to tell me the other names for NPC: “Nails, Paper, and Cardboard” and “Not Properly Constructed.” The year after we moved in here, a tax adjuster for Travis County said he had been one of the original owners in the little exclusive condo neighborhood attached to the bigger development of single-family homes. They had a HOA and tons of issues with NPC…he added the epithet “Never Pays Contractors.”

After 20 years of living here, I’ve added my own: “Nothing Per Code.” The sheet rock is cheap, too thin, and barely taped; none of the plumbing was installed correctly–we’re still waiting to find the money to have the hall bathtub drain fixed (as in new stuff, properly installed), so we can replace the flooring in the greatroom–on long walls, there’s only 1 duplex, instead of the 2-3 there should be; everywhere we’ve torn up flooring, there’s been some cryptic message scrawled in black marker by an inspector “not plumb” with an arrow pointing to the wall, is my favorite. But the single biggest code whanger I’ve found was brought to my attention by the guy who bought the house next door. He’s since sold and moved, but I remember one day, not long after he moved in. He was furious. He’d bought the small footprint, 2-BR house with the intention of adding on a second story, only to find out that the studs were 22 inches on center. If you’re not the constructionly type…studs are supposed to be 16 inches on center. The builder saved about a third of the framing costs right there. My studs run 22-24 inches on center (and no rude jokes, please).

Since NPC went under, Nash Phillips came back and started Wilshire Homes here in the Austin area. As far as I know, they are very nice, well-built houses, in fact, we had looked at some up in Round Rock. Either he learned his lesson…or another thought occurred to me. Perhaps the people working for NPC were robbing the company blind, some sort of concerted effort by a superintendent, etc. to skim as much as they could. Imagine, if you will, NPC buys enough wood to properly frame out the entire subdivision. But the contractor, because he knows he’s not going to get his money anytime soon…skims 1/3 of the 2x4s. That’s a fair chunk of change, and in these cheap little houses, purchased mostly by first-time, low-income buyers, who’s going to notice? Makes you wonder.

None of this really has much to do with my dilemma, except that the house is built of cheap materials which are now falling apart. Not horribly…yet. But enough that the house really needs work. Add to it my proclivity for STUFF and we have a problem. Add to it my total lack of energy when I get home and we have an even bigger problem. Add to that my ADD and …well… Anyone who knows an ADD person knows that we tend to start a whole lot of things, but never finish them, which of course adds even more crap and inability to decide even where to start. My doctor, who’s a sleep specialist (never, ever tell a sleep specialist you snore…), says he’s not sure he believes in adult ADD.  eh…doc? So I guess we grow out of it?  Doc, that’s like saying someone will grow out of their eye color. Supposedly, all my symptoms can be explained by sleep deprivation.  That’s fine, but I’m not sleep deprived, as long as I actually go to bed on time. I also find it hard to believe that certain behaviors specific to ADD are caused by sleep deprivation.  Like starting a project or taking on a position in a group, and then losing interest, but meanwhile, you’ve gone gung-ho into it, and have all the tools, books, materials, etc. only to leave them behind…usually in a pile somewhere and start another project. Or, be working on a project and think about something else you could do with an item in your hand and go dig out all kinds of fabric, etc, to look at and then leave that out.  Then later, you want to clean up, but literally do not know where or how to start.  Inability to concentrate? Sure, I could give that one over to sleep deprivation…except that it’s been going on all my life, and I’ve only been snoring since I got really overweight….

Any who…back to the house. In some regards, you could say I’m a type of hoarder. But I can throw things out, I can organize them, I can give them away…having the energy to do that and enough time to think about it, that’s something else. Depression…did I mention that part, too?  Crap.  Well…and you can see just how easily I get distracted by reading this, yes?

This started out about my house and all that needs to be done…stayed tuned for part the second.