Home improvement resembles hurricane

Fixing up your house is like camping out with a hurricane.

You just hope you can ride out the storm and that one day your house will really look like that Better-Homes-and-Gardens image that pops up daily in your thoughts.

Joni and I have embarked on a plan to upgrade our house.

That meant hiring a contractor and wrapping our house in siding. That was the easy part. Someone else did the work.

But the inside is a different story. We plan to do it ourselves -- everything from new flooring to new paint on the walls.

Of course, first we had to clean out the closets.

Our dining room table has been moved into the garage. It's slated to be replaced with one from my parents' house. That's left us temporarily with a card table as a kitchen table.

The new flooring is here too, stacked in a corner of the dining room waiting for us to plow ahead with this project.

Having had a garage sale, our garage now looks like a garage again. It's more organized than the rest of our house.

We have high hopes that we'll eventually get things shipshape or at least looking less piled upon.

No matter what we do, we're fairly sure our home will still look like a house when we're done.

The same can't be said for one country house in Hellam, Pa., that's shaped like a Paul Bunyan work boot.

Until recently, a woman even owned the place although she didn't live in the shoe like some Mother Goose rhyme.

The place has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room. It even has a basement located, naturally, in the heel of the shoe.

According to a news account, the layout is similar to that of a modern, split-level home with a honeymoon suite in the toe of the boot. Stained glass windows in the house repeat the shoe motif.

The house was built in 1948 for Mahlon Haines, who founded a shoe company.

Personally, I'd get a kick out of such a house. So would Becca and Bailey who seem to have a never-ending supply of footwear.

Girls collect shoes the way that boys collect jerseys.

Unlike my daughters' collection of shoes, the shoe house has become a tourist attraction.

I don't expect our home will ever be a tourist attraction.

I'd settle for a home where everything is in its place and the junk is back in the junk drawer.

But unlike all those TV shows, home improvement isn't a short-term thing that can be accomplished in prime time.

As any parent will tell you, children often seem like professional demolition crews. They can wreak havoc on a house.

At any rate, giving your house a facelift can be a time consuming endeavor even if you're not living in a giant shoe.

I wouldn't want to train TV cameras on our improvement efforts. There's no quick action here, unless you count the times when we're chasing the dog.

Home improvement would be an even bigger chore in a giant shoe. Imagine trying to tie all the loose ends together.

One 13-year-old boy who visited the home said it was fun to visit the shoe house, but he wouldn't want to live there.

All this remodeling stuff makes me feel the same way about my home.

It makes me want to just sit back and kick off my shoes, assuming that the living room chairs haven't been moved to the corner.

Amid all the remodeling, it's sometimes hard to tell if the shoe fits.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.