I am sitting on the floor, my bottom flat on the hard deck, back against the wall, legs stretched straight out. This is the position of an old man who has been in close contact with the floor for the last 72 hours. I have red marks on the front of my knees. My glutiosuma maximacallits are screaming for relief. When I try to walk down the steps into the garage, my thighs are on fire.

I knew this was coming weeks ago. At first there was just casual talk. Then there was serious talk and dates on the calendar were being discussed. Then I witnessed several back and forth texts with photographic evidence of preparations being made. And finally, I was brought into the conversation.

“Hey,” the boss says to me. “We’re helping Shannen put down new flooring in her house next week.”

I am always a willing participant in the many little DIY projects that somehow magically appear on my calendar. I have been doing DIY my whole life. I was doing DIY before anyone ever said DIY. I was figuring out what the inside of a clothes dryer looked like, believe this or not, before YouTube existed.

I didn’t have any “how to” videos to watch. I just started taking stuff apart. Take enough pieces loose and you get into the guts. You start looking around. You start deciphering the mechanicals and pretty soon you have a dryer lying on the floor in 27 pieces that won’t work.

So, I did what any young man would do. I called my dad. I called him because I remember seeing our dryer in pieces on the back porch. Parts laid out on the kitchen table.

I also remember Dad sending me back and forth to the smokehouse to grab a different wrench, or a longer set of pliers. I recall lots of grunts and groans and perhaps a few choice expressions which I was sworn never to repeat.

I didn’t know how he did it. I was just the helper. He didn’t call his dad for advice. D’Daddy never owned a clothes dryer other than the line in the backyard. If there was a manual, it was long gone. He just dug into it and figured it out.

This is what lies behind the spirit to tackle a thousand little jobs around the house. Anything from replacing a knob on the stove to tearing out an entire bathroom and making it like new again. It’s not because I have great skills. I don’t. It’s just that I don’t often run from trying.

Shannen is a go-getter. When we showed up on Thursday morning, she already had all the baseboard and most of the door trim piled up outside under the shed. The carpet had been ripped out. Almost all of the old hardwood floor was gone. The only thing left to rip up was one piece of old linoleum, in the kitchen.

This was not going to be my first flooring job. I’ve had plenty of experience. It wasn’t the lack of know-how that gave me a reason to hesitate. It was the memory of sore muscles, aching legs, and cramps that concerned me. My last floor job was a few years ago. That one left me nearly paralyzed for three days, and it’s not like I’m in better shape now than I was then.

First thing, we measured and snapped a chalk line to make sure our first runs were straight. The work always goes slow at first. There’s a lot of thinking. A lot of debating about how to break the seams. Deciding what pattern you’re gonna follow as you move through the house.

This is not a small job either. Living room, kitchen, dining area, two small hallways, laundry space, master bedroom with two closets. The floor in this house was a mix of carpet and laminate products. Shannen wanted one contiguous floor throughout except for the kids’ bedrooms.

By the end of the first day, we made it across the living room, into the hall at one end, and through the entry way from the garage into the laundry space on the other end. Marion was the saw man out in the garage. David and I were putting down the floor. We were hollering out numbers so that Renee could relay them to Marion and then bring us the cut pieces we needed.

We had a system going. The flaw in this system is that it kept me on the floor all day, shifting from one knee to the other. Squatting, bending, grunting. I repeated my dad’s choice expression more than a few times when it seemed to apply to the pieces that wouldn’t fit like I thought they should.

It was getting on into the evening. I had finished off my jug of lemonade hours ago. My nourishment for the day had come from a small bag of chili cheese Fritos, a Twix bar, and one slice of pepperoni pizza. I’m sitting flat on my derriere in the corner of the small hallway. My legs are straight out in front of me to allow the blood to reach my feet. Some of the feeling is gone in my legs.

This is where Bobby finds me. The son-in-law is here after work to check on our progress.

“What’s wrong Doc? Can’t you get up?”

“I haven’t tried yet.”

The young man laughs at the expense of the old man. But that’s just his way of being friendly. He leaned down a little closer and dropped his volume as if to say something intended for my ears only.

“Hey Doc. I’ll bet you weren’t expecting all this when you married into this family, were you?”

I knew this was gonna be hard on me. And I know as I get older there are some things that I should probably stop doing. For example, I don’t like getting on the roof much anymore. But overall I’m not ready to stop. Not yet.

We were laughing on day two about how much better we were getting at laying this floor. Marion traded off with me. I took the saw job, and she worked with David on the floor. That helped.

Somebody said something about hiring us out to do this kind of work. David laughed.

“There ain’t enough money in the world to pay me to do this.”

I said “Amen,” and then hobbled back out to the garage.

It took us two days to finish the flooring. The third day we got all the new baseboard and trim back up. And all the while Shannen managed two kids, prepped the floors ahead of us, painted and installed what trim she could, and stayed up until midnight getting ready for the next day.

When we shoved the furniture back in place late Saturday, we all sat for a minute. Shannen looked around and smiled. I mean really smiled.

So, yeah, I don’t do this for money. I just reach deep and get it done for family.

The smile at the end makes it all worthwhile.

My legs will be back to normal in a couple of days.