Design & Build Magazine May/June 2015

TheFinalNail
THE
FINAL
NAIL
Jamie Miles
writer, wife, mother and turtle wranglerY
When Opportunity Knocks,
Should You Always Answer?
“I got a call out of the blue. This
really nice guy wanted to sell his
house before it went through the
foreclosure process,” remembered
Abney. Asking advice
from industry friends, consensus
was the 20-year-old house needed
a little work for a reasonable
amount of money. After walking
through the house with the owner,
Abney agreed, and within two
weeks of that first phone call, the
Abney family’s lakefront dream
came true. What dream doesn’t
need a little work?
“The first time I go out to the
house and it’s mine, I walk through the door and my legs turn black.” Fleas. Once the
former owner’s dogs moved out, the insatiable pests picked the new owner as their
next host. Conditions were so insufferable, the contractor refused to start work till the
fleas were gone. But as the Man Who Came to Dinner, these teensy guests weren’t vacating
their turf without a war. His foe firmly entrenched, Abney naively—by his own
admission—set out 30 flea bomb cans. The result “was like I fed the fleas.” Round
Two, Abney turned to the professionals. After their treatment, “it was like they fed
the fleas.” The company tried a second time using so much flea-killing juice in Lee’s
words, “the carpets went ‘squish, squish, squish’” — to no avail. Round One, Two
and Three going to the fleas, who were now drunk on pesticide.
Calling another company out of the bullpen, this pest reliever refused to treat the
house until the carpeting was removed. A Catch-22 for Commander Abney, because
no person of sound mind wanted to tear out the flea infested, insecticide-pickled carpet.
Finally, with a Matterhorn of carpet in the dumpster out front, the all-out assault
began. The new strategy treated the whole house, the attic, the crawl space and 30,000
square feet of yard. Round Four found Abney KO’ing the fleas and the remodel could
begin. Or so he thought.
The first task was to remove wallpaper throughout the entire house. Like their fellow
inhabitants—the fleas—the wallpaper refused to go peacefully. Every square inch
had to be peeled off by hand. This left the interior of the house covered in bitty shards
of discarded wallpaper, layers of dust, and riddled with ladders. “You couldn’t walk
through the rooms because the floors were covered in ripped wallpaper. We went
through the money from the bank in the first two and a half months.” He added with
a slight grin, “Then it became too depressing to keep track of.”
When he first bought the house and was given a two-month timeline, Abney envisioned
a grand Fourth of July with hotdogs and fireworks, or a large Labor Day
bash for family, friends and clients. After Labor Day came and went, he received a
call from a good client who joked that his invitation to Abney’s Labor Day lake party
must have gotten lost in the mail. “I had to tell him that my lake house is in shambles.
There was no party.”
Replacing the HVAC was the one big expense Abney knew about at purchase. But
unforeseen time—and money-consuming roadblocks—kept appearing faster than a
frisky flea reproduces. The front steps needed replacing. Then, because the former
owners smoked, residual tar stains on ceilings and accompanying cigarette smell ended
up being as hard to evict as the wallpaper and the fleas. Oh, and when a worker
Attorney Lee Abney kept a
lookout for a sweetheart deal on
lakefront property since moving
to Madison in 2001. Abney’s
parents, living in Dublin, Georgia,
had long entertained the idea of
a place on Lake Oconee, close
to Lee’s family and their son and
family in Milledgeville. Then in
June 2014, the perfect opportunity
appeared. Or was it the perfect
storm?
used an upstairs toilet, an unknown leak flooded newly restored
downstairs ceilings.
While Lee spent nights after work and every weekend replacing
faucets and painting walls with the construction crew, he
wasn’t the only family member stressed by this home remodel
gone south—north, east and west. Summer Abney, Lee’s wife
and Morgan County High School math teacher, spent those
same work nights and weekends home alone with the couples’
young son, McCullough. “Summer was 100 percent right,” Lee
laughed. “I’m an eternal optimist, and she’s a realist. It turned
into Lee’s Folly.”
“The way I envisioned it, you hand someone a check, then
come back out and the work is done.” Reality ended up to be
quite different. Abney quickly learned that the more he distanced
himself from the project, the faster things spiraled out
of control. He realized early on that to afford the remodel, he
was going to have to strap on a tool belt and don a painter’s cap.
“Anything you could do with a drill and not have to have any
construction skill, I did it,” he laughed. This included painting
DB Written by Jamie Miles
walls and working on the dock. He handled a lot of the cleanup,
hauling loads of rotted wood and wallpaper scraps out to
the dumpster. Weekends were packed full of trips with the contractor
to Home Depot and Lowe’s to select materials and haul
them to the house in his truck.
Lee’s Folly—though painful at times—paid a big dividend.
Three generations now have a beautiful lakefront home to enjoy.
And, the ordeal gave Lee a new perspective on what his
clients face. “Lots of times, I’ll close a construction loan, then
later close the permanent financing. I’ll ask if they are happy
with the house while making small talk. Now I truly understand
what these people spent the last year doing.” Lee laughed that
remodeling or building a house is like a part time job without
an end date. “You just do it till it’s done.” What started out as
a two-month rehab with a small budget, ended up taking over
three times as long and costing double the forecast amount. And
as of this printing, Lee’s Folly is not quite over. There’s one
door left to weather strip, and one can light to be installed. No
need to check your inbox for any Fourth of July invites just yet. DB
DESIGN&BUILD MAGAZINE • MAY/JUNE 2015 63