A LOFTY PROPOSITION

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Like any red-blooded American male, I am inherently drawn to the sound of a power saw. When I heard my neighbor’s going full speed the other day, I had no choice but to follow zombie-like to see what he was building.

Building stuff – and its awesome counterpart, cutting stuff, with a power saw – is an intoxicant. I couldn’t nail two pieces of wood together without something catastrophic happening, yet I still am drawn to the power it bears.

When I got into the garage, I saw that he was building a loft. His son is heading off to college, and he had constructed this massive bed-housing structure for the dorm. As I gave a little tug on the loft, I was amazed at the quality of the craftsmanship. It was solid and sturdy, and I am sure would have just as soon held a mattress as it would a Chrylser. It was, to say the least, far different from any of the lofts I witnessed in college.

I lived in a fraternity house for three years, and during that time I saw quite a few lofts. Most of the lofts that we had were, for lack of  a better term, threats to human civilization.

Because we were college students, we had to string together what we could to purchase the materials needed for construction. Our purchasing power would generally allow for a box of nails. From that point, we had to improvise. One minor piece of loft construction that was missing was the small component commonly known as wood.

I’m not sure if you’ve priced it lately, but lumber is really expensive.

Last time I checked, there are trees all over the place, and the idea that these stores are shaving some bark off of a dogwood and then charge you $10 for it seems absurd. Someone should look into this.

We developed ingenious ways around the oppressive lumber costs. Much of the wood was borrowed from other lofts. Often times, this was done when the owner of said loft was not, technically, in state. Over the course of several years, the wood that had originally constructed four lofts had been spread out over about a dozen, leaving most of them with the stability of a balsa wood car tire.

The first loft I had was one of inheritance. My roommate and I had managed to score a corner room, which was a prized commodity. The previous tenants had built a loft along the long wall, and it was about three feet off of the ground. Underneath, the mattresses were set directly on the ground, and a mini-fridge separated the two. On top, a couch and some chairs were perched, eye-level with the television that sat on the dresser. It was a tremendous set-up, one in which you could peer down on anyone entering your realm. As a later tenant of the room once said, “That was a really nice loft. It was a shame I had to tear it down when I moved in.”

Another room I was in had a loft that was, by my estimate, 59 feet in the air. I had about a seven-minute climb to get into bed every night. And, on several occasions, I had an escort courtesy of gravity back to earth, since the loft was slightly more narrow than my mattress, and it would create this fabric slide if I rolled just the wrong way.

Several other folks in the house produced high quality lofts, so far as the in-house loft standard went. One room had not so much as a loft, but a second floor. It housed a full-size mattress and a little hatch to climb up on it from the back. It was painted black, so it looked like a stealth bomber wedged into the room. Some of my fraternity brothers dubbed this room the “Pain Cave.” I still don’t know what this means, but made a point of not being in there alone.

Another loft was u-shaped, and housed two mattresses perched up near the ceiling. There was ample room underneath for couches and the like, and every exposed piece of wood was littered with graffiti, scrawled in magic marker. Needless to say, when college students are doing the graffiti, this is one of the rooms that you did not show your parents.

I miss the old days of lofts. They were a great addition in terms of appearance, and actually added a functional component as well. Maybe I should convince my wife that we need one in our room. I can save plenty of money on wood costs. There is no way my neighbor needs all of those pieces.