Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty by Diane Keaton

Author:Diane Keaton [Keaton, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780812994278
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

THE IDEA

After renovating fifteen homes, I’m well acquainted with the subcontractors who don’t show, the hardware that takes nine months to receive instead of the six weeks guaranteed, and the nightmare of opening up a wall only to find a dozen new stumbling blocks. After working for eighteen months on my last renovation, a Mission revival in Beverly Hills, my contractor, Ben Lunsky, was finished with my endless interruptions: “Wait a minute—what if we …” or “How about we try this?” or “Hey, Ben, I’ve got an idea.” It all came to a head when I pulled him aside saying, “You know, we’ve got to cut costs, Ben. Things are getting out of hand. We need to—” Before I could finish, he blurted out, “Look, what can I do? Sorry, Diane, but you’ve got to face it. You’re custom all the way, and you always will be!” I’d been around the block. I knew “custom” was short for “change-order queen.” Ben wasn’t wrong. On the eve of the recession we somehow managed to finish the house. Duke, Dexter, and I lived in it for a year, sold it at a loss, and rented Meg Ryan’s Spanish-style home in Bel Air while I pondered a more reasonable approach to my housing obsession.

It was the end of an era. My serial renovation days were over. No more hunting down unattended gems, buying them, piling up expenses with an endless supply of “new ideas,” and selling them at a profit. No more. That’s what I kept telling myself, but like any other junkie, one day I had another “new idea,” a big one. It came to me as I was pinning a cool image tagged as “staircases” by c ktnon, a graphic designer on Pinterest who has a couple million followers. At that moment, I decided the only way to get over being called “custom” was to embrace it. What could be more custom than building a new house? I justified the fantasy by telling myself I would be taking on a housing experience that demanded a practical approach. It would be a “how to” learning endeavor. And maybe in the end, if I did my homework and stuck with a budget—if I minded my p’s and q’s, whatever that means—I could build a sensible dream house from the ground up for the three of us. So I bought a half-acre lot on a street called Riviera Ranch Road in Sullivan Canyon.

Shortly thereafter, a young couple purchased Meg’s house. They weren’t interested in extending the lease. Their lawyers notified us that we would need to leave at the end of the month. In a panic, Aileen Comora, my broker, and I looked at dozens of long-term rentals, and every house on the market. I was seriously freaking out. Plus I’d already invested the bulk of my savings in the unbuilt dream house, so I couldn’t exactly go hog wild. Several homes had the stamp of previous lives within their walls. As nice as they were, I couldn’t live in the residue of someone else’s life.

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