The Money Pit

When Rush and I first started dating, he repeatedly offered to help my friends and me with projects around our houses. He ALWAYS had the right tools and supplies, and they always came from the same place—his shed. No matter what you needed, the shed had it, thus earning it the honorary moniker, The Magic Shed.

When we started work on The Money Pit, most of the tools from The Magic Shed (which resided in the country, half an hour outside town) made their way into the attic for “easy” access. They didn’t stay there, however. Our intense disdain for trekking up and down stairs (far too much like exercise) led to construction materials strewn, stem to stern, throughout the house. The disarray did not pose a problem … until we moved in.

We cleaned up for the New Year’s Eve party, dragging load after load of construction materials and tools up the stairs and into the walk-in attic space. The house felt like a home for the first time. It was great!

After the holidays, when we returned to restoration work, we smartly designated an area in the den floor for more convenient, “temporary” tool storage.

Great idea—poorly executed. Within a couple months our make-shift tool-land was indistinguishable from the rest of the house, and tools and supplies once again infiltrated the entire Money Pit. Like specialized, DIY hoarders, we found ourselves relegated to narrow paths through the house that led to the bed, the kitchen, one bathroom, and the back door.

One day in March, Rush lost it. We were playing our millionth round of Marco-Polo amidst the mess when he bellowed, “I know I said we weren’t going to stop working on the interior of this house until it was done, but I CAN”T LIVE LIKE THIS ANOTHER DAY!!”

At first we hoped a moving company could get the shed up the driveway, but the grade proved too steep, so a determined, if not a little crazed, Rush painstakingly removed the shed’s siding and roof, deconstructed the walls, divided the floor into manageable sections and drove the disassembled Magic Shed up the driveway.

After weeks of re-assembly, although still lacking siding, The Magic Shed now stands proudly in the back corner of our yard, and tool-land has been permanently evicted from The Money Pit. Alas, we will never be invited to star in an episode of Hoarders, but on a positive note, Rush can’t quit grinning.