UNITED STATES—Well, there’s a bright lining to being Lupe, all her boundless love and exercise of freedom is just the anecdote (excuse me, anti-dote) to all the silence and the sirens and pervasive on-edginess that seems present in our neurotic traffic patterns, and the heart that goes pitter patter when the password doesn’t work.
Leapin’, loca, Lupe has thrust herself with all might against the heavy mahogany-stained door (Home Depot’s idea of “Baronial” with that lousy leaded glass slit that goes against major tenets of Feng Shui, like letting the light from outside in, and permitting an outsider to have a view of what lies within. Since Lupe came to our house, she has repeatedly slammed with all her muscular might. And it has had consequences.
The too-heavy door sags and the floor works as a plane on the hardwood planks. That contravenes the notion that windows, doors–everything in a harmonious house–ought to operate fluidly. And it’s not as if there was no effort put into the effort to making the ornate door glide smoothly open and closed. Its functionality was a quest that took years and years, lots of inquiry and never giving up.
First, I asked neighbors, and they said change the old hinges, clean up the gunk and dust. Hammer any hinge pins into place if they are sticking up. This I did and it was still the same result. Oh yes, I also made sure that the hinges were screwed in tight.
You know, the whole problem with the door is the previous resident, a very theatrical person, who was a female impersonator and had sheds of sequined gowns outside the tight perimeter of the dwelling, had a weakness for grandeur. She got this massive carven door, stained it with mahogany marathon. There was this pedestal sink in the tiny, tiny bathroom. There was a frieze of wallpaper cherubim in the bedroom of which one panel has been preserved. So naturally Ginger, chose the baroque wooden door, much more fit for a suburban house in a wannabe Hancock Park mansion, than a humble cottage.
I found a workman who’d done a fine job on a neighbor’s casement windows. He only spoke English. He did not like questions. His idea of a fix was sinking 12-inch screws into the twoXfour frame that couldn’t support the heave door. At the end he overcharged and walked away before the job was truly done.
Months passed, seasons. Then I met a father and son team who specialize in fixing 1920s houses. They opened up the wall, they put in double reinforced two by fours, and anchored the hinge screws to the new frame. They patched the stucco, matched the shade of banana yellow that only a Van Gogh or a Ginger would choose to live in.
The door was okay for a few years and then came Lupe. When anybody comes to the outer door, she slams herself full body against the door. The months have past, now more than a year, a crack shows where the new frame has come loose from the massive door. The solution is all too obvious. Rather than repeat this home-repair Odyssey: move into Hancock Park.
To be continued…
