On Ethical Dilemmas and Old, Shitty Houses

If I could have had a superhuman power, this past weekend it would have been time travel. Nothing could have made me happier than to visit the previous owners of my house thirty years ago. If only I could have convinced them not to fuck up the house -- especially not to cover the second floor and stairwell with wall-to-wall carpeting. Most especially not to glue it to the floor with thick smears of yellow paste. The beautiful hardwood floor.

Alas, time travel is not within my repertoire of miracles.

The first thing I did upon buying the house was rip up their stained carpeting. Even in its heyday, this particular carpet would have been an unwise decorating decision. An abstraction of yellow and brown, it made your eyes twitch if you looked at it too long. Tearing it off was cathartic, like I was liberating the floors, freeing my house from the oppression wrought by previous owners.

Underneath I found the glue. Heavy gobs of hardened glop, tan and gray, whose job it had been to hold that awful carpet in place. It was the barrier between me and my dream of beautiful hardwood floors. In a harrowing battle back in January, I reclaimed the wood on the second story. This weekend it was time for the stairs.

Instead of time travel, I have to resort to toxic chemicals.

The thing about working for an ethics-based organization is that everything becomes an ethical dilemma. Chemicals scare me. I have a bad habit of reading the entire warning label from start to finish and it's paralyzing. Sentences like "Cannot be made non-poisonous" and "Known to cause cancer in the state of Californa" -- thankfully I'm not in California -- keep me awake at night. What am I doing to my body? What does this stuff do in the landfill? What about the poor guy in Memphis who works at the factory where it's made, taking it home on his clothes and skin to his children every night? Does he not even realize?

My friend Steve, one of my many gurus in do-it-yourself home repair, dubiously lent me his sander to attack the stairs. "You really should use a stripping chemical," he said. "This going to take you forever."

I told him that stuff scares me. And why do we go to all the trouble of making good-for-you choices like eating organic vegetables only to bring even nastier chemicals into our homes and spread them around on the floor? I just can't face doing it.

"I know," Steve said, "but it's because we go and buy these old, shitty houses."