Seeking to create the widest

possible profit margin, our builder used the cheapest possible components

he could find. When we moved in, windows, doors, hardware, fixtures, and

floor covering were all of the kind of quality that one might expect to

find in a double-wide, or a Winnebago.

But even worse was the workmanship.

Doors were improperly hung and seams in the drywall were a free-handed,

serpentine affair. Nearly every stud, rafter and nail in the drywall was

visible due to the shoddy patchwork, and many of those nails have since

popped out. The builders had actually left nails lying under the vinyl

floors so that these worked their way through in a short time.

The subfloors were of "topographical

interest" as they changed in elevation from one end of a room to

another. And those same subfloors announced the approach of even the stealthiest

among us with their squeaking and popping.

The kitchen counter appeared

to have been built by a child. The rafters in the attic looked as though

the workers had gone mad as they were placed at random and lacked any

semblance of symmetry. Plenty of daylight found its way into that attic

as well through the many gaps in the siding and sheathing.

I dread visits from my builder

brother-in-law from the North, as each time he finds something new to

marvel over.

These houses and these subdivisions

are springing up in our area with all of the spontaneity, and longevity,

of mushrooms. They are plastic and disposable.

When a national news program

featured footage of a house slipping off of its foundation and crashing

into its own back yard a few years ago, it was neither a mudslide in Malibu

nor a sinkhole in Sanford. It was the handiwork of an Atlanta-area builder.

My former Victorian will be yet standing long after the remains of this

much newer house are buried in the landfill.

I have spent the past six years

systematically correcting our builder's shoddy work and replacing

his cheap components. Cheap carpet has given way to good old-fashioned

nail-down hardwood. Subfloors have been screwed down. Walls have been

re-plastered and painted. If we once thought that purchasing a new home

would at least eliminate the hard work of renovating an old one, we have

since learned different.

On the day when I was tearing

up the cheap vinyl in the kitchen to replace it with hardwood, my whimsical

daughter and I had some fun with a marking pen. We wrote graffiti all

over the vinyl flooring.

One thing led to another, and

she traced my outline on the floor like a police silhouette of where a

victim lay. Then I drew a shirt on the figure and wrote the name of our

builder's construction company.

Not quite finished with our

shenanigans, we used a carpet knife and removed this outline of "our

builder," and placed it in the driveway where we could run over him

in effigy.

After several days of this

abuse, our victim mysteriously disappeared!

We later learned that our neighbor,

whose home was built by the same man, had borrowed it for her driveway!

Mark D. Linville

Fayetteville, Ga.