Home improvement project a job for eager alter ego Kevin

Faded linoleum. Leaky toilet. Light fixture circa 1972. Towel bars falling out of the walls. The paint color is, well, when I bring home the book of color chips, the closest match is "Nicotine Dinge Yellow." Or maybe "Jaundice."

I'm gonna do it. I've been threatening to do it. But now I'm really gonna do it. I'm gonna remodel this bathroom.

I channel "Kevin." Kevin is my alter ego. See, I'm kinda intimidated by the masculine idiom of "handyman." So I call on Kevin, who's kinda like the caricature Tim Allen made famous in the hit sitcom "Home Improvement."

Kevin speaks in a deeper voice and walks with a swagger through Lowe's and Home Depot. He brims with confidence. What he doesn't know, he'll learn or die trying. When all else fails, he puts duct tape over it.

Speaking of Lowe's and Home Depot, here's a home improvement theorem you can carve into stone: The number of trips to Lowe's or Home Depot equals 0.3 times the square footage of the room being remodeled. My bathroom is approximately 82 square feet. A conservative estimate is I'll be going to the hardware store a minimum of 20 times before this is over.

HARDWARE STORE TRIP NO. 1: PICKING OUT TILE

I look. I muse. I imagine. Joseph, my 7-year-old, says, "Papa, look at this!" And there, on the floor of Home Depot, is this Mensa puzzle he has put together while I've been waiting for the Design Fairy to tell me what to do. It's beautiful. But of course they don't have enough. And of course it's a discontinued item. I eventually go to four Home Depots in the Las Vegas Valley to find all my tile.

DEMOLITION

Everything out. Everything. My friend watches me fuss and fume with Allen wrenches to get the toilet paper dispenser off the cabinet lavatory. "Uh," my friend says gently, "doesn't this whole cabinet come out?"

"Yep," Kevin says.

"Then why are you even bothering to take that off?"

See, it's moments like this that make me think tackling this project makes about as much sense as Do-It-Yourself Home Bowel Resection. A graduate school psychologist once told me I had gifts in right-brained intelligence, which naturally must atrophy certain kinds of left-brained linear thinking. When I was a boy and made similar mistakes, my father said that same thing a little differently. A little less, uh, technically. Specifically, he accused me of putting my head into parts of my anatomy in a way that would make Gumby proud.

Now I see that was just my dad's colloquial way of saying how proud he was to have a son who could write poetry and talk about his feelings.

THE TILE

Is it a federal law that home builders aren't allowed to build square corners in any room, any time, for any reason? I'm reminded of Jesus' parable: "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you can tell an 87 degree corner 'Be thee 90 degrees,' and it will be so." At least I think that's in the Bible.

HARDWARE STORE TRIP NO. 14

In this modern age of huge home improvement warehouses, do you ever think you could die, just flat die on aisle 5, and they'd sweep you out when they opened the next morning?

See, when I was 14, I got my first job at my Uncle Conley's True Value Hardware store. It was a classic "mom and pop" store. I swept. I unloaded trucks. Eventually I was trusted with inventory and stocking shelves. Finally I was graduated to clerk. I still have my clown blue True Value smock.

A customer could hardly walk 10 paces into the store before being met by a clerk asking, "Can I help you, sir/ma'am?" Then we walked the customer to the item needed. We taught them -- right there -- how to use the tool or assemble the fitting. It was a satisfying feeling to meet some hapless homeowner carrying a tangle of copper tubing, and then send him out with just the right material and the knowledge how to use it.

In the modern warehouses, I feel lucky to get eye contact.

I ask the boy/man chewing gum: "Can that pedestal sink be sold separately from the pedestal?"

"I don't know," the boy/man says, thoughtfully chewing his gum.

All righty then. Seems our dialogue has been concluded.

THE FINALE

I bulldog the pedestal sink into place. This is beautiful. Someone should have dinner in this bathroom. Someone should make love in this bathroom.

The socket wrench falls out of my hand while I install the vanity mirror. It falls in slow motion and shatters the pedestal sink.

My children find Kevin in a fetal position on the bathroom floor.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at skalas@reviewjournal.com.