Seven years. That's how many years of loving labor we have invested in our Florida home to make it the comfortable, safe, bright retirement home of our dreams. When we first laid eyes on the house during an open house one fine March day, Rick did not want to even go inside to see it. So I went in alone, took a look around, and saw great potential. I finally persuaded Rick to take a look. All he saw was lots of work. We went back with Steve and Chris after the open house to peek in the windows. They, too, saw the potential buried under all of the dirt and neglect. All Rick saw was lots of work, but he was willing to give me what I wanted. We closed on that house on June 6, 2010.
On the day we closed, Rick wanted to sleep that night in a hotel. I wanted to save the money, so we moved in that same day. The house was built in 1960, and it had not been updated since that time. It was filthy. While Rick cleaned the disgusting toilet (he would not even use it standing up!), I set about sweeping dog hair and dirt from the Florida room. I scrubbed enough of the floor to set down an air mattress -- which would be our bed for the next two summers -- so we would have a place to sleep. Since we both were still teaching in Wisconsin, we had just a few precious weeks each summer to start the transformation process on the house.
Like many crazy people do with inanimate objects, we personified the house. Because of her location, we called her Gladys, and I immediately began to think of her as a sad, tired, achy, neglected old woman who was just crying out for some love and attention. She needed some new clothes, a little bit of patching up and boosting up, a ton of cosmetics, a new hairdo (roof) and a few flowers to make her beautiful again. We had our work cut out for us.
The kitchen was so disgusting that we tore everything out of it within the first week. For the next two years, we survived with a metal rack from Sam's Club to hold all of our dishes, pots and pans, and other kitchen necessities. We started with just a microwave which we had brought from Wisconsin and a refrigerator that took me four hours to clean out and to sanitize. Rick built a 2 x 4 frame to hold a Lowe's countertop and a sink. Part of the time, I was doing dishes in a dishpan in the bathtub.
Our living room consisted of folding lawn chairs, orange plastic storage tubs for tables, and old lamps on the floor. We didn't have a dining room table, so the plastic tubs also served as dining tables the first year.
Then we started to do everything to the house, as money, time, and energy would allow. Each summer until we both retired, we would come down to intensely work on Gladys. We evicted the rats in the attic, and took out all of the old insulation. We added new, fresh insulation to guard the house against the intense Florida sun. We replaced the electrical service, the HVAC, and almost all of the plumbing inside. After we retired, we switched the hot Florida summers for the mild Florida winters. We spent thousands of dollars replacing every window and outside door with 130 mph hurricane-resistant materials. We replaced the garage door with a hurricane-resistant door also. We replaced every interior door in the house with solid core doors, adding new woodwork to match.
Through the years, we worked from room to room, renovating each in turn. We built an all new kitchen with new, clean cabinets, new appliances, and new lights. Fresh paint covered every inch of the interior, and new closet systems were installed throughout. We expanded the master bath, adding a new shower and sink. We had all of the terrazzo floors throughout the house ground down and re-polished until they shined line new.
And just this last year we took out a loan to refinish the last of the house. We gutted the last untouched room -- the 1960's pink-tiled bathroom -- and brought that room up to date with a new tub and tub surround, new walls and a fan, new lighting fixtures and electrical, and a new sink and vanity top. We spent thousands of dollars on a new roof and roof fan. We had a new cement front walkway poured, and we added pavers on the north side and back around the new patio slab to help with the drainage of torrential rains that sometimes visit Florida.
Seven years, thousands of dollars, and more cuts, bruises, injuries, aches, and pains than I care to count. And now we may lose it all.
Hurricane Irma has taken a turn, and instead of going up the center of Florida, it has now drifted to the west coast. The last time the west coast of Florida saw a hurricane was in 1921. Now Irma is on a course to make landfall in Naples and to travel up the coast. The eye of the hurricane, with its most destructive winds, is scheduled to pass directly over Dunedin and Tampa. We will get the worst the storm has to offer. The one saving grace is that it may be downgraded from a Category 4 to a Category 3 hurricane by the time it gets that far north. Storm surges probably will not reach Gladys, but sustained winds over 100 miles per hour still may cause complete devastation of the entire town.
Gladys has withstood countless storms throughout her 57 years, but Irma may bring her to her knees. The eye of the hurricane is supposed to hit her about 8:00 p.m. and will last until approximately 8:00 a.m. on Monday. Seven years, and it all may be gone in twelve hours.
Yet, as I have said earlier, if Gladys is seriously injured, she can be replaced. The people of Florida are the real concern. We are scared to death for them. The people we have met, enjoyed, cared for, and learned to love in the past seven years are irreplaceable. We have lost one dear friend from church already this year, and we do not want to lose any more. We worry about our family members who live just a few miles away. We worry about our neighbors, and we worry about our friends in our weaving group and in our church.
Sitting here watching the news and waiting is extremely difficult. We are scared. We feel helpless. All we can do is to watch, wait, and pray that we have something left in Florida when tomorrow dawns.
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