What the House Was Hiding

For the last few weeks, there has been a crew of workers in and around my house. I took on a huge project renovating my basement animal room over the last month or so, and timing and my wife’s ambition coalesced, and voila, we are also now renovating our living room. As with most things with our aging house, each layer removed revealed old wounds that needed redressing.

The termites that decided to have an insect sex party in our living room a few years ago revealed the level of their destruction when the old floating floor was removed. Those little dudes ate most of the plywood below the floor. Thankfully, that was all sitting on a cracked concrete slab, as we discovered. Had this been anywhere else in our house, well, we would have teleported between floors due to the dietary particulars of hungry termites.

Once those old boards were tossed into the dumpster and the crew tore into the wall, we discovered that the damage didn’t stop at ground level. Not only did we have termite damage from floor to ceiling on one side of the room, but we also found that the grade of our driveway was directing water to the most termite-damaged corner, making it the perfect habitat for rot and termite dining. Thankfully, part of this renovation required us to tear into the wall to remove an old window, and what’s a few more studs and plywood boards among amigos? It was an easy fix for this stellar crew, and I’m thankful we found it all and corrected those weak points.

The room is almost finished. We’re waiting on a set of French doors that went on backorder the moment we hit “buy it now” on Home Depot’s website. So, since I had more work to do and the doors were a few weeks away from landing on my, er, doorstep, we decided to see if the crew wanted to take on a unique challenge. My tortoise pen was dismantled and trashed last year when we did our backyard dirt rodeo, and it’s been something I’ve had to put off more times than I’m happy about. The construction crew was happy to oblige. Currently, they’re making a semicircle of 2-by-12s and 4-by-4s that will contain my jumbo tortoises, maybe a rhino.

Sometimes you must admit your weakness, inability, or lack of time and hire it out. I could have built this pen, but I lessened my load and let the professionals handle it. They’re roughly halfway done with it, and I’m already stoked on how it’s turning out. In the next few months, once the literal and figurative dust settles here, it’s going to look like an exhibit worthy of personal viewing by select friends and family. I’m excited to share my hidden worlds with the rest of you via videos on my YouTube and other social media channels.

I’m trying to take the advice of so many folks and unburden myself from so many of the things I’ve taken on. Letting someone else build my tortoise pen is yet another example of how I’m trying to listen to you all. Stress still abounds, work hasn’t gotten any better, but I’m finding small ways to hit the pressure release valve. One of those things has been multiple recent trips into wild spaces.

I released another Catching Creation episode earlier this week. The views on my channel don’t reflect the hard work I put into editing, but I don’t care. Yet. I’m still earning the trust of the good people who used to tune in by being as consistent as I can in this early phase. I need to buy another camera and eventually a new computer, but I’m taking it one thing at a time and using what I’ve got. Thankfully, my iPhone is a digital Swiss Army knife of sorts. A good story transcends medium, at least I hope.

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Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker based in Bethania, North Carolina. His work has appeared in Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and other outlets, and he directed Hammer Down, a documentary about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom with Alpha Battery 5-113th of the North Carolina Army National Guard. For The Havok Journal, he often writes essays and reflections about war memory, veteran life, the outdoors, and everyday experience. You can find his books, collected works, and social media at www.stanlakecreates.com.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.