#37 Renovations
January 29, 2008 by clander
All white people are born with a singular mission in life in order to pass from regular whitehood into ultra-whitehood. Much like how Muslims have to visit Mecca, all white people must eventually renovate a house before they can be complete.
Of course, most white people do not reach this goal until they are 35 or older. But the need to do it is as instinctual as walking.
But it is important to note that white people have little or no interest in renovating a suburban home built after 1960 (except in Southern California). All white people dream about buying an older property (”with character”) in a city, and then renovating it so the insides look all modern with a stainless steel fridge.
Though the seed is planted from birth, it really starts to grow when renovations take place in a family home during childhood. They don’t understand why there are so many men with mustaches in their kitchen, but they know that they will be gone in a few weeks leaving behind a nicer kitchen and a happier mommy/daddy/life partner of parent.
Please note that ALL white people went through a renovation when they were kids. This is a good subject to bond over, perhaps a story about how you were embarassed at a sleepover when a friend went to the bathroom and there was a contractor on the toilet. Embellish as necessary.
I also suspect there is an unconscious tie-in with recycling. Don’t build a new home when you can buy an old one with architecture that harks back to a time when white culture dominated all others.
I pooped my pants
I don’t believe this is a racial issue. I only read this because I found the tag line interesting. Maybe us whitey’s want to renovate homes because we I don’t know..some of us don’t want to destory even more good crop ground and don’t see a reason to throw away things such as a whole neighborhood because it has become some what out dated or run down.
Every race of people seeks out where they are comfortable.
Bunch of racists comments on this site and just because you are black doesn’t make them any less racist!
Addedum:
What is so appalling is that Annette you and your ilk want to use race as a justification for your own basis and personal failures. Grow up. Not everyone who doesn’t like you or doesn’t want to be around you is a racist. Maybe you just aren’t pleasant!
Have you ever thought that maybe White people want to save beautiful pieces craftsmanship instead of destorying it?Ever you been in an arts and craftsman bungelow? Or a beautiful Victoria that would come to life with tender care?
I can name numerous neighborhoods in my home town that were once wonderful places to live and raise families for people of any color. And now I wouldn’t walk thru them without an assult weapon due to the drugs, gangs and general violence. If I said that statement and then followed it up with this, “This all used to be white but are now black look at what happens when black people move in”you would scream “Racist”. I can point neighborhoods too where it was a battle ground and then the Hispanics won (over the blacks) and now it’s a becoming a place to be again. Not because of race it’s because of people wanting to take responsiblity and take care of want they and not using their race as an excuse for all their shortcomings.
Just one more comment, ever driven thru the projects in any major city?? I have. Those don’t start out that way, but they always end like Wayne Minor in KC.
http://www.pitch.com/2005-09-15/news/nowhere-to-hide/
I got gypped. We were born into a house that stayed the same size until we all grew up and left. I feel kind of off-white now.
Jake - it’s okay to be Ecru. I “renovated” a Port-o-John on the side of the San Diego Freeway last month. I couldn’t fit in a stainless steel fridge, but there is some great post-Warhol art now hanging inside.
There’s people who tear down the existing house, and build a McMansion, is that like “Aryan House Supremacy”?
(notice the meaningful AH included in description)…
Hey , your blog is fun, but can you start a “things White people hate” blog? or add to this one. That would be even more swell. I might have to twitter you a starbucks coffee or bonus points at B&N (bookstore, in case you don’t know).
stuffblackpeoplelike - eating watermelon! hahaha!!!
stuffarabpeoplelike - pumping oil! hahaha!!!
stuffblackpeoplelike - gang warfare! hahaha!!!
stuffmexicanpeoplelike - eating beans! hahaha!!!
stuffchinesepeoplelike - shooting heroin! hahaha!!!
stuffblackpeoplelike - welfare! hahaha!!!
stuffjewishpeoplelike - keeping money! hahaha!!!
stuffmexicanpeoplelike - wearing sombreros! hahaha!!!
stuffchinesepeoplelike - eating rice! hahaha!!!
stuffarabpeoplelike - kissing goats! hahaha!!!
stuffmexicanpeoplelike - wearing sombreros! hahaha!!!
stuffblackpeoplelike - sniffing glue! hahaha!!!
aren’t i funny and clever!!!
don’t you dare call me a racist!!!
See #40, “Irony”, you idiot.
Renovations are only relevant if they are making a white neighborhood, which turned off-white for at least a decade, white again. White people on the fringe are whiter than those who never left.
Right?
Hey, where are #36 and earlier??? I feel like I might be missing some pretty important stuff that white people like.
I’m white and I can’t afford to renovate my house. Cool?
Terrifyingly true. I think I may need to renovate here soon myself!
I am white and have never experienced nor desired renovation.
Sorry. Guess I missed this one.
You must live in a condo - loser.
I suppose rennovations are good. Having car parts and broken lawn mowers on the lawn is not as appealing as a stove or washer that actually gets clothes clean. Kitchens that enable folks to cook homemade meals is a better answer than fast food or 7-11 kitchens.
I never had a renovation as a child.
My parents bought and renovated an old house when I was a rugrat and part of my early language was Dad’s swearing - my brother swears exactly like him still. Old wallpaper, the table saw screaming, dipping my hands in housepaint….
I tripped onto the sharp edge of a varnishing tin and cut open my nose and it had to be stitched up at hospital. This renovation left a scar… and a dozen years later I was a teenager going to a shrink and remembering the surgery because they didn’t like using anesthetics on little kids in 1960. Trauma in white.
My mother, with whom I grew up, has never owned her own home, yet the will to renovate is strong within me and I’m not quite 30 yet. I promise to live the dream where my mother could not.
i am so sick of renting. i wish i had property to renovate.
Does extensive and complicated landscaping count as “renovation?” My dad and all of his buddies are super obsessed with precision mowed lawns. It absolutely must be a perfectly symmetrical plaid. Creepy.
Muslims don’t ‘have’ to visit mecca idiot, white people do!
Voice,
A visit to Mecca during season of Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, traveling there is a sacred duty required of all who can afford to go. Mecca, of course, is one of the holiest cities in Islam. Another holy city is Phuket, Thailand, where many able-bodied Muslim men go to drink and carouse with prostitutes. Apparently, Allah doesn’t travel outside the Middle East.
you sir are a thick dummy get your head out of your arse and wake up
sorry my comment was meant for the posting before yours.
I totally just finished renovating my kitchen — you have to add that white people love blogging about their renovations . . .
http://renovateretro.blogspot.com
Note the stainless fridge . . .
This is so true. I am 32 and have already renovated two entire homes. I am constantly looking for more property to renovate so that I can do it again. My parents are in the process of removing all the carpets from their bedroom and putting in Bamboo hardwood floors. We are sooooo white
You’re so gross! Pigs, thats what you are.
I am embarrassed to say that my 86 year old house is undergoing renovations right now. This morning the contractor told me how much more than the original estimate it was going to cost. That really made me turn pale.
What about those white guys who look for chances to renovate in exchange for a break on rent? Lame.
I am older (47) so I can boast of whiteness some of you younger white people can only dream of.
When I was a child and going through house renovations, my parents installed carpet over the hardwood floors. It was olive green with this kind of sculpted quality to it that, when new was an interesting texture but after being walked on was beaten down into dirty lumps. They put a lovely mustard yellow one in the kitchen (where nouveau white renovators would go ga-ga for the original red and white linoleum underneath). There was purple shag carpet in the bathroom, carpet on the stairs and in the laundry room (it was just a remnant and not the full wall to wall).
But the best reno my parents did was to install a high quality wall of panelling in the living room accented with a fireplace. My father built the fireplace himself out of plastic “stones”. Except when he was gluing them in place, he mistakenly placed two “random” stones side by side, thus ruining the whole effect. Our electric log kept sticking, so instead of the piece of rotating plastic turning continually it would get jammed, do a loud series of clicks, then race into place when it finally freed itself.
I have, like other older white folks, learned from my parents’ renovating errors in judgement and replaced the carpet in my living room with a fine laminate. White people are ALL OVER laminate.
Not only did I live through a renovation as a child, but I now own my childhood home and am re-renovating it! I live in a 93% white suburb, but the house is over sixty years old. I also took a shower in a bathroom with no walls, but no embarrassing walk-ins ensued.
[...] Kelly, comes this hilarious gem of a site. I am particularly fond of #37, #40, #75, and of course [...]
And, let’s not forget: IKEA!
um…this renovations thing can simply be put as white people got mo money..haha
DANGER WARNING DANGER WARNING DANGER WARNING
Please do not renovate a house where children are living. Dust, fumes from adhesives, lead paint, asbestos, fiber glass, and many other dangers will seriously degrade your childrens physical and mental health permanently. You might also want to buy a lead testing kit like lead inspector. Make sure your child’s doctor knows what you are doing; So they can tell you you’re nuts and that when your kids are grown up they will hate you for poisoning them.
Elevated lead levels from a home renovation might be called “White person’s retardation”. It is actually fairly common.
This one makes me feel horribly unwhite.
I grew up in apartments and rented townhomes, so I never experienced the white-man’s joy of home rennovations.
I am not even close to buying a home to rennovate, or even not to rennovate, and it doesn’t look like I will ever get there.
I am 35.
I’m so unwhite.
in 1977 when I was six, my radical feminst mom hired a team of lesbian carpenters to tear down a wall in our 1890 farm house .
I got hit on the head with a flying board during the renovation. This experience, and this web site, explains much about me.
I understand my whiteness so much better now.
Thanks!
now i understand why all the americans i have ever met are raving lunatics.
i have dated both white and black american girls and my god they both needed therapy .
and yes i am a white english man.
Oh goodness.
My home restoration project won an award.
my home was never renovated, but my neighbour’s was and i always thought they were better than us.
Building, engineering, creating, restoring, inventing…whitey stop it!
I never went through a renovation when I was a kid. You generalizing swine. It takes money to renovate and most white americans are not rich enough to renovate willy-nilly.
I find it hilarious how so many of my fellow whites also have no sense of humor. Or at least, all the so-called progressives that take offense to these truths.
Oh God, this is so true!
My dad renovated the shit out of our house when I was a kid!
Okay, technically he’s not white but white enough.
Shannon, that your comment cracked me up! Thanks. ^_^
This is only half true. Many White parents bought houses in new subdivisions.
Whitey, that doesn’t matter. Renovation is a biological imperative. Renovation doesn’t necessarily mean tearing down walls and adding yoga studios. It can be as simple as repainting the bedroom.
The mother of all renovations is Habitat for Humanity. If you’re unlucky enough to live in a rental, and you can’t renovate, then you must find an outlet for your urges. HFH allows you to not only renovate, but to check the diversity block (as you put up drywall with persons of color).
Where there’s a will, there’s a way my friend.
white people struggle to use computers and find the 35 posts prior to this one…… and use net-speak such as “TEH LAMES”, “net-speak”, “haxor”, and “ROFL”
I am English, so for us you have to have a REALLY old house, otherwise it doesn’t count. My house is Tudor, AND Grade II listed (extra points!) AND we are ’sensitively renovating’ it. Points all round!
Do you live in a castle? I hear everyone lives in one over there.
Here in the colonies, if your house is over 25 years old, it’s an historic landmark (if it hasn’t yet been paved over to make way for a Whole Foods.).
Oh man, what a bottomless cup of plagiarized anecdotes for the taking here!
A person wishing to ‘pass’ could dine out on Saffron’s story for a month. At a private club.
And Shannon….that may be the Great American Novel. The first line alone beats “Call me Ishmael”.
My husband was born with a wild hair to renovate everything in sight. My ethos is more ‘any port in a storm’. I believe this fundamental difference has created more disharmony than gambling or adultery could.
This is my favorite ‘thing’ yet.
Gotta confess: restored 4 houses from age 22 to 35. Went through restoration as a kid. It brings up all kinds of white goodness-
1) I was gentrifying.
2) Other whiteys give me serious “street cred”
3) Younger whiteys wonder how they can do it (the area is now successfully gentrified and they can’t afford to live here)
4) The bank would lend me money with only a degree and no credit.
5) Other whiteys think I must have been “psychic, brilliant, intuitive, etc.” even when I plainly tell them that I was lucky and just sold the house to the next whitey who wanted to pay more than I would have dreamed it was worth.
I love this site. Because of the local gentrification there are many honkeys here now that love most of the things listed on the site. I have asked newcomers about these things (other superhonkeys from Portland, LA, Miami, etc), they kinda laughed them off and said, “You’re local, the first Starbucks appeared here two years ago, these things are extremely well developed in the rest of the country.”
Thank you stuffwhitepeoplelike, you have allowed me to research and discover My People so that I will never have to appear naive or base in front of my new white friends!
I do I admit it, I long to renovate. I am unfulfilled when I am not renovating. Since I was little girl I wanted to acquire and old property and remodel it. My family has never stopped remodling our 100 year old house (that was no originally a house when it was built). I have done the work since I could walk. I was in the construction industry for years laying hardwood floor. Now I have bonded with you and all this time I thought it was because I loved creating things with my hands and I loved architecture. Now I find it it’s just cause I’m white. No wonder all the construction guys looked at me funny.
Hahaha……I’m so guilty of this one……my home has been renovated so many times, its ridiculous. I’ve got a subscription to This Old House, for gosh sakes!!!
I just found this site and I am in love! I can’t believe there are other people out there like me. I’m a current renovator in a fringe neighborhood that is making a comeback…mostly due to whities like me buying old houses and putting way more money into them than anyone else who grew up in the neighborhood can afford! Gentrify away! I already have my eye on my neighbors house…he’s old, so chances are pretty good that’ll I’ll get my hands on it soon enough!
So if we move away from the city into suburbia, we are criticized for white flight, and contributing to urban sprawl, etc. But if we stay in an older place and improve it, we are being silly. What exactly can we do to please this blogger? Self improvement and trying new things are clearly taboo among non whites. We should just sit back and let the rappers demonstrate to us what is cool to say and wear. It all has to do with class. Look at the way rappers spend their new found fortunes. Now that’s something to laugh at. Ever watch Cribs? It seems the ultimate aspiration is to have a closet bigger than they mama house to store their collection of Air Jordans.
Too many people have no experienced this. I am so white it kills me…every thing on here is ALL ME!
FUNNY STORY -we were getting our basement finished when I was just starting to get boobs 7th or 8th grade. Anyway, I was minding my own business when a tornado warning sounded and my mom and i were stuck in the basement with weird mustached men…creepy and true and i love who ever is writing this, they/ you are GENIUS…im white i dont know how to spell
that should be a topic too
whites ARENT spellers
guilty as charged. Parents did nothing but buy, fix up and then sell their houses. I have the bug too… but sadly no money. So I freecycle as much as I can and buy the pieces a bit at a time. Takes years to do it, but it means I am not paying 1000s of dollars to do it. I can’t afford that. Not all us white folks are rich you know…
and anyone who doubts the remodelling bug… just watch the DIY and Home networks…. Not a single non-white show on em I swear!
I live in a so not white neighborhood. Nobody here renovates. Costs too much.
lol white people do love to spend money
We finished our slate tile a couple weeks ago. Love it!
This blog is so funny it makes my sides hurt. As a black man who can attest that all of this is true, I enjoy reading your blog and knowing that Whites (especially upper-middle class) whites are doing exactly what you are talking about. Its’ great!
We’ve done two long and painful restorations in a tiny historic port city where evertything is a renovation because there’s no place to build anything. Everyone in the city gets a daily email listing of houses on the market and does drivebys to check the neighborhood. Really old people better make the outside of their house look like a much younger person lives there or realtors attempt to become their pc companions. And it’s time to talk about kitchens, people! We have a kitchen tour every summer. Thousands of people pay $$$ to wait in line to see people’s kitchens (and whatever else they can get a peek at). Looking for cherry cabinets and black granite counters? They are all here. First floors have been eviscerated to accommodate massive Viking stoves, combo microwave/convection ovens built into walls with extra conventional ovens, Sub Zero refrigerators, wine coolers, drawers for dishwashers and extra refrigeration. Mosaic tile “masterpieces” glow in the light of halogen spots. Kitchens deserve their own listing. Mine remains pathetic. It’s too much of a challenge.
[...] right, the RB family is back at one of our favorite hobbies - home renovation. Wow, we really are white, aren’t [...]
[...] #37 Renovations [...]
[...] #37 Renovations [...]
check ur dna - how white r u?
not soo white after all - and hey, let’s do the pyramids - they could use a ren - but hey, whitey ain’t eben figured out how they were built yet - ha ha ha
newjackcity,
I’m Black and I’M doing it. I’m rehab mad and loving it. I love Starbucks and Border Books, live in a still barely gentrified, sleepy neighborhood, but a great many things from the list are regular passions for me, my partner and my friends, Black and White - and East and West Asian, and Spanish (Spain), and…
However I don’t hate my parents, or like not having TV. Not a sushi fan, and who in the hell is David Sedaris?
Stereotypically Whites are the “Mascots” for this List of Stuff, but by all means nothing on it is exclusively theirs.
You can read that White people don’t necessarily embrace the entire list either. And at least one is racist. From the posts he even follows the stereotype demonstrating a low IQ and racism regularly go hand in hand.
Maybe it’s because I’m not a descendant of slaves (just like Barack Obama) and know my lineage back to the 1700s, having an Irish Great-great-grandfather and a Native American Great-grandfather. Maybe not.
I’ve never, ever, EVER felt less privileged than White people and can’t understand the mind that does. I mean, we age better, have sexier physics and don’t need tans. I can walk in a room full of all Whites and not feel the least bit self-conscious. If I’m confronted with racist innuendo I tend not to catch on and never personalize any of it. If I know it’s directed towards me my reaction is pity not anger. “You poor thing,” I think, and move on.
I’m rehabbing a wood framed Chicago workers cottage in a heavily Mexican occupied section of neighborhood that is earmarked for the most ambitious development project in Chicago since the World Columbian Exposition, where world-class developers say it’s going to become the newest Chicago Lakefront destination. The community of mostly single family homes already has a few amenities thankfully off the radar.
In what was once the hood, it is now my urban vacation getaway on a double lot surrounded by 7 foot, solid constructed tongue & groove car siding privacy fencing I built myself, a new two car garage with a party door and lushly landscaped views from every west, south and east facing window.
The house has rare century old Eastern White Oak floors cut from oak savannahs long vanished from the Chicago wilderness. I’ve refinished them throughout and they are beautifully golden! No drywall needed on the main level, the 108 year old plaster walls are in perfect condition and custom painted in a neutral olive-gold that looks pale green and gives off golden highlights in the sun. The house has thick cedar beam construction that’s has cured to stone hardness. No decks for me, the front and back porches are fashioned after the original style-plus!
Tongue and groove and custom railings and private balcony off the new master suite faces the lake with views as far north as Hyde Park. I’ve redone the electrical, put in central air and a tankless water heater.
A finished basement includes pottery shop, exercise and laundry rooms, plus 1/2 bath. The attic is now a master suite (with full bath and WIC, and a 4th bedroom with a sunset balcony over the front porch.
The IKEA kitchen has a breakfast nook and French door entry to the back porch.
My Mexican neighbor directly across the street has totally rehabbed his wood frame three flat and turned it into on huge house with three stories AND a basement on a triple lot he fenced in and landscaped like I did.
The micro climate is such that when it’s 30 degrees out, just for a few hours I can enjoy my morning sunrise coffee on my east facing backporch in 60 degree temps. Simply luxurious as I listen to NPR, before going to my work-from-home gig.
A 2 minute walk from a really nice and clean eat-in Mexican restaurant. A 10 minute walk from the lakefront and shops and steps from bus routes and a double-decker, restroom equipped, quiet and gentile, grade level Metra-Electric Lakefront Line terminating in the heart of the business district with a brand new, block long station.
I’m at ease in this “hood” and escape to my private cottage every time I come home. With lingering gang activity quickly diminishing I’ll certainly not miss the authenticity of that, but there are private owned restaurants galore “uptown” from Americana, Asian to Italian and lots of Mexican. Even Nigerian and Polish. The neighborhood is off the grid from the rest of the city, which I love, and farther east (3000+ E.) than the upscale, monolithic New East Side of greater Loop fame, but there are no high-rises, no towering structures blocking the views of downtown Chicago to the north from the newly planted lakefront park. The area has THE ONLY portion of ORIGINAL beachfront in Cook County, which is also sparsely occupied because most people don‘t know it‘s there. It’s virtually exclusive to the neighborhood and was once a portage for the Pottawatomie that hunted in this region for 1000s of years. The neighborhood retains has an uncanny suburban feel. The best of both worlds…with just a few White neighbors to complete the diversity.
If there’s any gentrification going on here it’s not White people doing it.