A month and a half ago, Beloved and I began merrily ripping apart the deck on the back of Chateau Travolta. It's a big deck, around the size of my first Kansas City apartment, and it had railings and a rickety pergola, as well.

Since then, we've braved torrential rains and searing heat to tear the deck down to the joists and begin building it back. (If you like home improvement posts, I'll be blogging this when it's done.)

Nothing has been as entertaining as the search for the elusive Cabot Australian Timber Oil in Honey Teak.

The elusive Cabot. Goddamn it, you will not break me.

There is no evidence I can find that this color is discontinued. However, I have only been able to track its movements one gallon at a time across Ace Hardware store websites that claim a gallon is at this store or that store, but when you buy it online and then drive to said store, the Cabot has already moved on. I'm so sorry, Mrs. Arens, we don't have two gallons. We only have one. Our inventory system was just joking.

Sometimes, I'll drive to a store and it will be there. Sometimes the cashier will stare dumbly at me while waving for another employee to hurry up and come deal with this woman who has a coupon that I have never seen before did she print it at home is she a felon I don't know so I'll just stare.

Why don't I buy more than one gallon at a time? See above.

And the price! It varies wildly. I have paid $59, $44 and $10.95 for identical gallons of the elusive Cabot, the latter after a request for a twenty-mile, across-metro, in-store transfer that ended with, "Bobby says why don't you just drive over there?"

I have never seen a product so wily or so variable in its price and availability. I think it has something to do with the actual color "honey teak," because I can find its brethren in Home Depot and Lowe's .. but when I ask for honey teak, they need to call Brad in customer service because they have never heard of such a color.

Yet, it exists.

At this point, we have used two gallons on the rails and pergola and still need to sand and stain the actual deck floor.

God help us all if we need another gallon.

When we moved to Chateau Travolta in 2008, the housing market was on the verge of tanking. Then it tanked, and the For Sale signs started popping up like dandelions. Some of those houses took years to sell, which made me realize just how stupid it was to take on two mortgages at once when we sold This Old House to move here.

This week there are ladders all over my neighborhood, as the houses built in 1978 have begun to show their age. Shingles pushed well beyond their limits topple from  roofs. The boards on the sides of houses are torn away and replaced. The aluminium ladders sparkle in the May sunshine. 

As I jogged past a pile of boards pocked with bent nails, I started thinking about the kitchen remodel I've not blogged about. It's not that I'm not proud of it -- I am -- it's so pretty -- but I really only feel comfortable blogging home improvements we did with our own little hands, and though the demolition was difficult and Beloved has been moonlighting as a drywall installer, a plumber and an electrician for the past two months while I just took a crowbar and pried off floor tiles and anything else that pissed me off, for some reason, I just didn't want to blog about it because there were so many parts we paid someone else to do, and then for some reason that feels braggy in a way "look at the pocket door Beloved installed" doesn't. This may be justified only in my head. Or worrying about bragging in a Pinterest world may be ridiculous. Or I may be a huge hypocrite because I brag about my writing here (or at least that's what the About Me page feels like, but dude, I'm a professional writer, not a professional kitchen person). I'm conflicted, clearly.

Anyway, I was thinking about all that stuff while jogging by these piles of wood in my neighborhood and feeling so happy my neighbors were fixing up their houses instead of selling them. And feeling happy they had both the money and the desire to maintain their houses so they don't fall apart. And feeling happy and proud that we are taking care of Chateau Travolta and will leave it a better place than we found it. I wrote on BlogHer earlier this week about not toppling your blocks, and ever since then I've been really focused on how important it is to pay attention to your mind and body and environment and address problems right away, before they metastasize into something more. 

Maybe it came from growing up in a house my father built perched on the edge of land my family farmed. I like taking root, propping up and staying on. I'm glad my neighbors do, too. There is beauty in that. 

So for the past two weeks I have had the my-diamond-shoes-are-pinching-my-feet problem of a kitchen remodel. We've been in Chateau Travolta for five years, and this baby has been a long time coming. For the past two weekends, Beloved and I have ripped out soffits, torn out cabinets and nearly severed our hot water pipe (on accident, that last one). We've also had much use of the world's most fun tool, the fubar.

Now that we've found the linoleum under our linoleum and chiseled away the offensive tile in the foyer, the rebuild began this morning when the cabinet guys arrived. And listen, I can handle the barely veiled disdain and the insinuation that I might be more concerned with the color of screws than weight distribution, but the belching. One of these guys has belched 17 times in the past five hours, and he was gone for a while for lunch. None of the other guys has said a word. 

Are they so accustomed to his extra air that they don't notice it anymore?

Or is this part of the trade-off? No office politics, you can belch whenever you want, but you might end up arthritic early from the manual labor? I'm thinking of Office Space, clearly, but is it real?

I know plenty of people who work with their hands, and I can't imagine them walking into someone's house while they are there and belching every four seconds. Please tell me it's just this guy.

*Editor's Note: This editor has been too lazy to take photos, so that'll be a different post.*

Our continued efforts in the Transformation of Chateau Travolta rise and fall seasonally. In the summer, we become obsessed with the yard and flowers and the roof and the paint and the blah blah blah. In the chill of winter, when we're stuck inside all weekend long? OMG, the ceiling in the living room is so depressing. It's like hobbits live here or something.

(The ceiling has rough-hewn beams every six feet or so. They are were a chocolate color. Which is totally cool if you are a hobbit or live in a Tudor. Neither of those are we.)

Beloved installed the arch in the door between the kitchen and the living room a few months ago after my nagging incessantly about the unfinished doorframe for just a week or two, seriously. The arch is beautiful. And white. Which made those hobbit beams look even darker and goth-like in contrast. Also, the trim around the living room ceiling, which somehow in a paint-matching miscalculation is even darker brown than the beams, reminds me of wearing courdoroy with silk.

We've talked about painting those beams white or boxing them in since we moved in. But of course, every other project got in the way. It was finally the beautiousness of the arch that pushed Beloved over the edge. He really wanted to paint the ceiling. Ever since I painted the kitchen ceiling and dripped all over the lineoleum (thank goodness that's not staying, because people, I am telling you -- you do NOT want me to paint your ceiling), I swore never again. Not me. I'm not allowed to paint ceilings. Or remove tile. Not that I've ever accidentally punched a hole in a wall doing that. Um. 

So Beloved said if I left the house with the little angel, he would paint the ceiling and the beams. And this weekend, he did. It only took twelve hours.

The effect is pretty amazing. The trim still needs to be replaced, so it's not complete yet, but it's like the ceiling just rose by six inches. I no longer feel quite so hobbit-like.

We just keep hacking at this house, and with each measure, it feels more like ours.