The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Mikey Maddron!”
“Heya, Mike.”
“What’s up, buddy?”
“Where we sitting?”
“I have the house plans.”
“Let’s sit in the nook.”
“I love this place. You know those beams are real, right?”
“No way.”
“Yup. I was in one morning, and Christy’s papaw was here, and he did all of this trim and those beams – That draw knife up there is the actual knife he made the digs in the logs with. All of those tools are the ones he used to build the beams and the trim and the cash wrap. All of it.”
“Wait, those are all like old timey hand tools.”
“See that chain over there?”
“Yeah.”
“Look at the floor boards. He beat every single board with that chain to look all stressed.”
“He didn’t mill those floor boards with a hand tool.”
“No. He said he had all the rough lumber cut and he dried it himself in like a little shanty like a greenhouse or whatever, and he stressed all the wood and trimmed it all down himself.”
“That’s craftsmanship. I like how he finished the front room in white wash and this in mahogany. He’s got a real eye.”
“He got every one of these booths and tables and things at flea markets and stuff. Dude told me he spent a total of five-thousand bucks on the whole place.”
“No way. Can you get him on our project?”
“Nope This was a labor of lust.”
“Man, I’m so psyched you’re doing this.”
“I will, but I can’t start until June first.”
“That’s fine. We’re cutting in the house seat now, and we’re a week or two out on that.”
“Is Christy here? I’m gonna need a drink to deal with you two.”
“They don’t sell alcohol here, Stef.”
“You know the cook’s got a bottle back there somewhere.”
“There she is.”
“I’ll be right over.”
“She’s the best waitress ever.”
“I dunno, babe. That girl Caroline at Seasons was pretty damned good.”
“She got your number in like a minute flat.”
“Well, I had him the first time he walked in the door.”
“Heya, girlfriend!”
“My two favorite Michaels on the same day. I didn’t realize you know each other.”
“They don’t. They know me, and I take in strays.”
“You need a statue.”
“It’s on backorder.”
“Ha! See why he’s my favorite?”
“You take that one. I’ll keep this one.”
“Did I just win the booby prize?”
“Years ago, Mikey.”
“Coffee, coke, orange juice?”
“That’ll set me up.”
“Tea, Stef?”
“Is it made already?”
“First thing when I get here at six. I drink it by the gallon. How about you?”
“I feel left out.”
“Last time you got a tea, and the time before that you got an orange juice.”
“I haven’t been here in a month.”
“You’re handsome. Me and Chelsea got a bet who gets your number first. My plan’s memorize your orders.”
“You’re married.”
“He don’t care where I get the appetite as long as I bring food home to eat.”
“Wait, am I slipping you my business card when I leave or not?”
“That depends. Do you want a date with Chelsea, or do you want me to win ten bucks?”
“I have a feeling Alana would prefer the ten bucks version.”
“Ten it is.”
“I’ll have a Coke.”
“Two Cokes and sweetie’s sweet tea.”
“Here’s the card. You’re splitting that ten bucks with me though.”
“He’ll do anything for twenty-five percent.”
“Ten percent.”
“Deal.”
“Move that ketchup. We gotta get this rolled out before she comes back with the drinks.”
“It’ll get filthy.”
“That’s the point, babe. It’s not a real house plan until it has coffee stains and a smear of whatever that cheese like substance is in a breakfast sausage.”
“I was looking at it on the computer when Stef emailed it to me.”
“Did you see the truss plan?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty straight forward.”
“I sent it to Tindell’s, and they priced it thirty-eight with no changes.”
“Do you have changes?”
“Stef wants the basement open floor plan, no posts.”
“I wanna roller skate down there.”
“Wait, what?”
“I mean, not really. But I want it open.”
“That’s a big change.”
“It’s not so bad. It’s bridge trusses here on either side of the vaulted space, carries the load to the outside walls instead of the spread.”
“That’s easy enough. And Tindell’s priced it?”
“Yeah, I called the owner of the model house, Ron. He said he got his trusses from Anderson’s down here.”
“I use Anderson.”
“Perfect. You can call Ron and get his plans.”
“What about these plans?”
“Good question, honey. These plans don’t include the foundation.”
“Why not? Isn’t the basement part of the house?”
“Sure, but you can’t draw a detailed foundation plan until you know the ground it’s going in, so these companies usually just draw a cartoon like this one and put their actual house over that. Mikey gets his engineer to draw the foundations.”
“That’s why I can’t start until June. My engineer’s busy with her own stuff right now, and she’s got two of mine in the queue.”
“June’s not so bad. Can we be in by Christmas?”
“Easy if everything goes right.”
“What could go wrong?”
“Drinks. Roll that up..”
“Just put them on here. It’s okay.”
“Is this the house you’ve been building?”
“Ha! Nope. This is the house we will start building in June. Right now it’s just mud and rocks.”
“You’ve been sending those boys in three times a week for three months, and you’re telling me it’s three more months before you even start building it?”
“Girlfriend, three months, and it’s a mud pit.”
“Oh, I know. The cook gets pissed every time he sees the order come in, four country fried steak meals, four over easy eggs, four hashbrowns. He knows immediately Devin’s going to walk in here with those mud caked boots, and now he’s gotta go mop up the dining room because we don’t have a busboy until lunch.”
“Why don’t you make him use the takeout window?”
“There’s a takeout window?”
“It’s too cold. We only open that for dinner call ins.”
“Seriously. There’s a takeout window – in a restaurant?”
“No, Mikey. The whole conversation is an elaborate ruse to…”
“Kids, let me put these drinks down, already.”
“Are there any other changes?”
“Nope – first give me your orders. I know you want country fried steak, two over easy eggs and hashbrowns.”
“Waffles.”
“French toast.”
“Wow, that was way easy. Be right back.”
“Thanks, girlfriend.”
“As a list, we’re not building that detached garage in the plan. That probably goes here in the back.”
“Enter at the basement?”
“Yep. We already cut the road to handle it.”
“I don’t want the whole front of the house to be a garage.”
“And her don’t-want is our better-do.”
“Always has been.”
“Amen, brother. The model house has interior pocket doors. We definitely want those.”
“You should see the old house, Mikey. This guy went around almost every door and tore out the walls and put in pocket doors.”
“Not every one, but I did all I could.”
“Pocket doors. What else?”
“Nothing, really. We can’t get municipal power to the site, so I’m installing solar power like the old house.”
“That thing was off grid?”
“Yup. It was a hybrid actually. We had power there, so we used the grid as a backup.”
“I don’t know about any of that stuff.”
“You don’t have to. Me and my guys will get you power landed at the load center. You take it from there.”
“I mean, my electrician will get the electrical permit, but I don’t know if he can get the solar.”
“Right now we have a muni power permit that we haven’t cancelled yet. I was gonna have Stef call them, but then I figured I better leave it up there for now to keep the site legit. It’s all I have justifying all of my activity.”
“You don’t want to get caught digging that foundation hole without a permit.”
“That’s where you come in, Mike. Once you get your permits, it’s a legal worksite.”
“Yeah, but you’re digging now.”
“Buddy, don’t I know it. Worse, I’m living there.”
“What? You can’t do that.”
“I know.”
“Where do you go to the bathroom?”
“I’m planning a workshop, and I got a commode septic permit when I got the permit for the house septic.”
“Let me get this straight. You – how are you living there?”
“I built a shed.”
“Did you get a permit?”
“Nope.”
“You built a shed without a permit and put a bathroom in it, and you’re living there?”
“Nope. I built a shed without a permit, and I’m living in it, and I built a septic field with a permit, and I installed a toilet on the septic.”
“An outhouse?”
“Nope. A toilet shining in the sun.”
“Oh, buddy. You gotta – wait. How do you fill it?”
“That’s easy. I eat and drink – we flush it with five gallon buckets from the pond.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“Nope. Look.”
“No way. I mean. You just - go - like it’s --- inside. Just for everyone to watch?”
“I mean, it’s a half a mile into the forest, Mike. My only audience shits in the woods too.”
“Buddy - okay. You got troubles up there. I can work with the house seat and the road, but you gotta --- if you put walls, like a shed around that, you now have two buildings on the property without a permit, and if they go inside that outhouse, you have an unpermitted bathroom, and they’ll shut us down.”
“Meh, worksite trailers.”
“It’s not trailers though. It’s fixed structures.”
“Not exactly. I built the shed to be movable, and if I put walls around the toilet, I could make it look portable.”
“Is this all right in the build area?”
“No. It’s a couple hundred feet away – the shed’s in the build area.”
“You said the shed’s movable.”
“I’ll prioritize that into the schedule.”
“I’ll come look it over and see. The road and the house seat are workable.”
“I mean, we’re putting in silt fence now along the whole road inside the property boundaries. We didn’t do the easement, but we’ll eel the pond, and we’ll put silt fence around the whole work area.”
“Yeah, get that done. Half the residences in the county have unpermitted digs of some kind going on, and the silt fence’ll lend credibility.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“I’m afraid to ask. What else?”
“While we’re on the subject of infrastructure. We have a small solar installation temped in so I can have power in my shed.”
“Worksite office.”
“Worksite office.”
“Where’s the solar?”
“Right in the middle of everything, but it’s temporary too. The plan is to build the actual solar where the septic field goes, and that’s like five-hundred feet from the build site.”
“When are you doing that?”
“We were going to…”
“I meant, March, April, or May?”
“Noted.”
“What else?”
“Do you need to know about the dam?”
“Oh, come on. You’re killing me.”
“We’re almost done with that. By the time you get there it’ll be grown over with vegetation.”
“What else?”
“The HVAC. Have you ever installed Geothermal?”
“What’s that?”
“Answer’s that question. Make a note. This house is 100% off grid. Heat and Air are the biggest draws on power. Geothermal uses something like twenty-percent as much electricity on a load basis. It runs a little more, but it usually runs at like one-and-a-half kilowatts, which is like nothing compared to a standard heat pump.”
“I mean, my HVAC guy probably doesn’t install that. You take over heat and air along with solar.”
“Fine. Do you see the deck?”
“Yeah. I don’t do steel work. Can we just go with a standard wood deck?”
“The model house has concrete.”
“All the way around?”
“He built the standard deck supports more or less just with steel, and they poured a concrete deck into that form.”
“I don’t have anyone that can do that.”
“The model house guy can do it. He built three of those. I had him come to the site, but he doesn’t have enough license.”
“Mine’s eight-fifty, so as long as we can build this for less than six-eighty, I can build it.”
“I did the takeoff a thousand times, and we squeeze in under six every time. Enrique called it seven, seven-fifty with his estimate.”
“That’s about right. I didn’t go all the way in, but napkin math puts the materials around four, labor around two – plus, you have the solar, the well, the septic, and now the HVAC. This is doable. Who’s painting?”
“My uncle Tommy is a house painter. He’d love to do it.”
“So, a plain white house with bathrooms and a kitchen.”
“More or less. So you’re six-ish?”
“I’ll look at it, but if you’re doing the HVAC, the solar, the well, and the septic, and as long as there’s no more surprises, I don’t see why not.”
“How about the workshop?”
“What’s that?”
“No, Michael.”
“If he’s six, Stef, we can afford it now.”
“No.”
“Look, I live in a twelve-foot shed, and we’re talking nine months until I have the first hope of getting out of it.”
“If everything goes right.”
“What could go wrong?”
“That’s a loaded question, Stef.”
“I’ve already been there two months. That’s eleven months in a twelve foot shed if everything goes right, and we already own the trusses, and we’ve paid for the form and concrete work, plus I already have the garage doors.”
“I mean. I definitely don’t have time to build you a shed right now. I might be able to get you a framer or something.”
“Do I have to get a permit?”
“Come on. You’re already running one unpermitted shed and a toilet. That pic’s not real, is it?”
“It’s real.”
“A shed, a toilet, and you’re living there. I mean. Why not just get your own permit?”
“Timing. Plus, you tell me, you work with these inspectors every day.”
“Yeah, they’d never put up with you.”
“My point exactly. I can’t build it though. I really don’t have time to build the house. And I absolutely can’t have an unpermitted build going on at the same time as my build is going on.”
“Buddy, I’ll make it as easy as humanly possible. I have a fulltime crew living off my salary as it is, and if you get all the permits, I’ll do the work on the shed.”
“I could get you a framer.”
“Are you two not listening to me? I said no workshop until the house is built.”
“Wait. That’s different, honey. I forbid – that don’t fly here.”
“Should I call Phil?”
“Shut up, Mike.”
“Honey. We have the concrete work paid for, the trusses will be here in a week or two, and we already own the garage doors. That means we need concrete, wall studs, and plywood, and it’s done. Sixty-five hundred bucks, and I have a place to live. It would cost me more than that to rent an apartment.”