Home Renovation TV on Steroids

                         Home Renovation TV on Steroids1

         I stood apprehensively, yet assuredly, tightly gripping the can of gasoline in my garage. Then I struck a match, ready to destroy the dwelling that, of late, had brought so much mental--and potentially, fiscal--destruction to the lives of myself and my wife.    

         The  kitchen in our outdated dwelling looked like something inhabited by June Cleaver in the 50s—only with appliances so behind-the-times, dirty and practically useless and cabinets so worn the place looked like the Three Bears had broken in and ravaged it after waking up from hibernation and looking for their next three meals.

      When you walked into our bathroom you could swear a tidal wave had struck the house and the water ploughed through the bathroom window. Only it looked like the tidal wave had brought with it the most dirty water on the globe and struck almost with the force of a nuclear blast.

       Our living room no longer fit the definition of a room in which one could live a pleasurable leisure life. It and our dining room desperately needed “refreshing” at a bare minimum—and the same went for our two bedrooms.

    Little remained of a home in which two 21st century humans could expect to conduct their daily lives.

     My wife and I had spent the last two years planning to improve our “perennial fixer-upper” as much as our never-substantial salaries would allow, but our respective companies now felt “downsizing” would pave the way to their future prosperity and they found both of us at the top of their lists when it came to decide where the cuts would come.

    “What should we do?”, we asked each other over our humble dinner one evening, “this money trap will not yield enough if we sell to get us a home much better than we have now and I don’t know if we can afford to make the renovations needed to get the home into the condition we need to get the return we need to finance the rest of our lives.”

    Of course, we could opt for renting, but that simply would mean giving what meager funds we had to someone else while getting no ownership rights in return.     

    It seemed like we were “painting ourselves into a corner.”

    After a number of similar discussions lasting over a number of weeks we felt our alternative solutions left us very few viable options.

    “I see only one direction open to us, but going in that direction might not exactly fall within the exact direction of legal,” I told my wife.

    “What the heck do you mean?”, she asked. “I don’t want to wind up wasting the time in jail that we could spend living with fiscal security in a decent home.”

      “Maybe we can find a way to secure our future without sacrificing our freedom—if we play our cards right. You know that can of gasoline in the garage?”

      “Sounds like you are advocating arson. Last time I checked they did put people in jail for a long time for that, and a jail term doesn’t exactly secure you a new home when you get out.”

     “That’s only if they get caught. We need to be very clever so no one can directly link us to the destruction of the house. Just need to make it look accidental or pin it on someone else.”

      “Can’t see how we could possibly pull that off without anyone suspecting us,” she said in her best disapproving-wife tone,

        “This has to be a carefully-executed and top-secret project. We need to make it look simply like a mishap caused by the contractor we’ve hired to dismantle our outdated and useless garage.”

        We both lost a lot of sleep for the next month. We signed a contract for the garage demolition but did not allow any of our neighbors to get wind of our plans.

        Everything was set, including obtaining all the permits legally from the town building department for demolishing the garage.

            Two weeks later the contractor began work on getting rid of our backyard eyesore.

            He didn’t realize, however, that the destruction would amount to much more than he planned or that we gave him reason to believe we wanted.

            Then, on one dark night, after the contractor wrapped up his work, I snuck into the partially-demolished garage and carried out the gasoline can from which I had filled my lawnmower every spring.

             We already had conducted a number of garage sales to bring our home’s contents down to a number our neighbors would perceive as movable to a new place of residence. The rest we transferred to a storage facility, ostensibly anticipating departing to new digs after we decided in which direction to point our future.

             I had carefully mapped out the “accidental” path of destruction for the fire I planned to set--sprinkling the flammable liquid from the garage to the back door of the house. Then I opened the gasoline can cover and struck a match—

           “Poof!” In a complete and startling reversal of our “plot” the match went out and the garage miraculously rebuilt itself into a beautiful, one-bedroom, one-bath ultramodern guest cottage. Next came an unusually loud rumbling sound from inside the house. When I turned around the “remodeling” had struck again—in a matter of minutes it became a spectacular 21st century suburban sanctuary. After the transformation I entered the house and walked in disbelief through a luxurious three-bedroom, three-bath modern, open-look edifice.  My tour next led me into a brand new kitchen completely furnished with the most updated aluminum appliances, and a 65-foot brand new television graced the living room.

           My wife and I stood in the street outside our home completely flabbergasted. Instead of the “forces of nature” punishing us for our planned arson, had some strange entity taken pity on us and transported us to an alternative universe?  Had the odd-looking glowing green vehicle I had seen parked in our driveway just before I lit the match worked some type of magic spell on us?