This Side of the Pond

It’s the little things that get you when it comes to cultural differences, and the topics on which you know just about enough to be dangerous. The husband and I thought we were talking the same language when it came to the renovation of our bedroom – but we absolutely weren’t.

When I say I know enough to be dangerous, I am referring to two things. Firstly, I know very little about construction. Secondly, what I do know is based on an industry with different climate needs, culture, history and available materials.

We figured this out eventually and have been struggling our way through my ignorance with an acceptable level of success. I didn’t know what sheet rocking was, although I thought I did, and I was thoroughly baffled by mudding until it turned out to just be what I would call “plastering”.

Why do I know so little? Because the opportunities to learn how to build something are much more limited in Britain, where most things were constructed several decades ago (and sometimes several centuries); adding an extension to your home is almost always achieved by calling someone to come and do it for you (assuming you’ve got enough room in your back yard to add anything); and our buildings are generally made of brick and mortar.

You realize how set in our ways we are back in the UK when you consider that we were introduced to the idea of bricks by the Romans and have barely looked back. We forgot how to make them for a while (presumably because we’d built everything we needed) but, when we noticed we were running out, we made up for the lack by simply pulling apart old Roman villas and putting the pieces back together somewhere else.

It’s also economical in a land that sits on clay, not to mention that we learned our lesson about building with wood after the Great Fire of London in 1666, when an entire capital city burned to the ground because some fool left a loaf of bread in the oven.

It may surprise you to hear that I am not a brickmaker. I am not even a bricklayer, to my increasing shame. The closest I have come to learning how to build a house is living in proximity to a construction site, which is not as informative as you might think.

In my experience, a building site in the UK is an area of scaffolding containing a wall that will slowly grow taller, staffed by a group of men in high-visibility shirts, hard hats and ill-fitting trousers. As they will spend most of the day bending over their work, a construction site in the busiest part of the day becomes a sea of exposed crescent moons. We call them “builders’ bums”.

As far as I am aware – and, again, an expert I am not – when constructing a new home, we build two layers of bricks and place insulation between them. Stapling insulation to walls and covering it with dusty bits of board is not a technique I had ever seen used.

There are also parts of the process in the UK that I don’t think are as necessary in this region. For example, a newly constructed home needs to be aired in order to remove the lake of moisture that has accumulated in the walls from the constant rain that fell on them before the building was sealed.

If this does not happen, I can speak to the misery: the halls of residence I was assigned to at university ran behind schedule and had only just been finished when we arrived. For the next three weeks, we slept in damp sheets, dried with wet towels and filled the tanks of the dehumidifiers that the university scrambled to provide at least four times a day. It’s a wonder we survived the ordeal.

As far as I am aware, we have also never adopted the brilliant idea of prefab houses. To this day, one of my favorite novelties on this side of the pond is to see a house on the back of a truck, for all the world like a speedy artificial tortoise making its way along the interstate.

My own experience of home personalization is limited to painting a room or, if truly pressed, putting up wallpaper. I prefer to do the latter with supervision if at all, while the former has not really met with the best results due to my lack of a steady hand.

I learned how difficult it can be when I moved to London and my landlord granted permission for me to change the “old cigarette” yellow of my bedroom. I think he may have regretted it.

“Iris purple” sounds great in theory and I’m sure would make a lovely accent wall, but my younger self slapped it on every square inch of the room (including the carpet, due to my lack of a steady hand).

As with most things in life, you don’t know what it is you don’t know until the time comes that you could have done with knowing it. My poor husband revealed the results of his mudding efforts with pride at the weekend and couldn’t understand why I seemed so horrified.

Not only had I not realized we’d reached the plastering part of operations, because I’d failed to adequately enquire as to what mudding is, I had assumed it would be done in the same way I’m used to back in the UK. In other words, I thought it would be smooth.

I can’t remember a textured wall back in Britain that wasn’t achieved through wallpaper with wood chips embedded in it and it took several days for me to figure out why. Our walls are brick, which means there are no sheet rock seams to hide and also that the plaster needs to be thicker in the first place (up to three quarters of an inch, apparently). Flat is thus the status quo and texture is only for the fancy.

After breathing into a paper bag for an hour, gazing into the abyss of uncertainty and sleeping on it, I was able to select a texture that would please my eye. Meanwhile, my husband has concluded that he won’t be surprising me with construction work ever again. If we ever need another room, he says, he’ll be driving it in on the back of a truck.