The Ground Beneath My Feet (2)
Carpenter Jang had come by to do a final inspection. He wanted to check whether the eco-friendly paint we'd applied in two coats had cured properly, and whether the hanji-papered double-glazed windows opened and closed smoothly.
He went over everything with painstaking care.
"I've already looked it all over myself, and I didn't find a single flaw."
"Still, a house is something you only truly know by living in it. Problems have a way of cropping up in the most unlikely places."
Shouldn't this conversation be the other way around? Normally it's the homeowner who frets over defects while the contractor insists there couldn't possibly be any. That's how it usually goes, isn't it?
Which just goes to show what a genuinely good man Carpenter Jang is.
I doubted I would pour this much heart into a place even if it were my own home.
"I love everything about it. Truly, thank you."
"All the same, I'm giving it one more careful look. If anything bothers you down the road, I'll come take care of it—but if I'm working on another site, I won't be able to drop everything and run over, you understand."
"Of course."
I stood in the middle of the living room and let my gaze drift slowly around the house. Not a single pane of window glass, not one bathroom light fixture, had been chosen carelessly. Every product had been rigorously vetted, and the standard had been harmony, plain and simple. Nothing that clashed or jutted out—everything chosen to belong to this house. All that agonizing had finally borne fruit in the form of perfect harmony and coziness, and the thought made me smile.
"The more I look, the more perfect everything seems."
"My eyes tell me the same. Of all the houses these hands have touched, this one would make my top five."
Carpenter Jang was not a man who said things about houses that he didn't mean. For someone who had built and restored countless homes to place mine among his five finest—it meant my house was truly something.
"To me, it's the best house in the world."
Whenever I had a spare moment, I'd read books on hanok restoration and gathered information. As the saying goes, the more you know, the more you see—and with every bit of knowledge I picked up, new ideas kept coming. All of those ideas were baked right into this house.
The exterior kept the elegant grace of a hanok guesthouse, while the interior had been transformed into a modern, table-height layout that did away with the discomfort of floor seating. We tore out the cramped maru floor, knocked through a wall to connect the bedroom and living room into one open space, and installed sliding doors along the kitchen.
The kitchen looked a touch small at first glance, but that was an illusion. The back door of the kitchen led straight into the sunroom, which was, in truth, the real kitchen.
Grilling fish and meat, simmering long batches of bone broth—that would all happen in the back yard connected to the sunroom anyway.
That was why we'd put the large refrigerator and the main sink out there. If I wanted to rinse lettuce and tomatoes fresh from the garden and go straight to barbecuing in the back yard, a sink out there was non-negotiable.
To continue the tour: the nook beneath the bend of the L-shaped house had been made into a study. A wall of windows offered an unbroken view of the village and the mountains across the valley, a front-row seat to the turning of the seasons. The master bedroom and living room had big windows too, but what you saw from each one was entirely different. That was another charm of this house.
When Carpenter Jang finished his final inspection, he spoke up.
"Honestly, before we started, I never imagined a derelict house could turn out like this. It's all thanks to your input. This is why a man ought to keep learning until the day he dies."
He met my eyes and broke into a grin.
"Remember how many times we butted heads over this?"
"We didn't fight. We had discussions."
"I appreciate you putting it that way."
Toward the end, our opinions had diverged so sharply that we'd spent days hashing it out. We'd both grown attached to the house through the work, so neither of us was willing to back down from a position. But it had all come from wanting to do things better, so I carried not a shred of resentment. If anything, I was simply grateful to Carpenter Jang for giving his absolute best.
"Now that it's all done, I'll say it—every single moment of this was a joy."
"Ha! Was it now? It must have worn you out, though. You know what they say—building one house ages you ten years. There was so much to fret over, but seeing it turn out this well, I feel proud."
Carpenter Jang's rough, work-worn hand brushed a speck of dust from the windowsill.
"I learned a great deal on this job because of you. I'd always assumed my way was automatically the right way. You taught me otherwise."
If anything, it was Carpenter Jang who had broken out of his own mold—not anything I'd taught him. A man hailed as a master of his craft had bent his ear to a rank amateur like me and actually wrestled with my ideas.
"Thank you for saying so."
"It's no empty flattery, so hush. Anyway, it was a pleasure. I feel a real sense of accomplishment—and pride, too."
"Are you heading off to another job site now?"
"I'm doing wallpaper and flooring for the women's association president's sister's house, and then there's work out Wonju way I ought to go see."
So he was planning to travel out to Wonju for the job. I chose my words carefully.
"Whatever work you take on, please be thorough with your contracts. I'd also recommend hiring someone specifically to handle the paperwork."
"I suppose I should. Though finding someone competent isn't easy in my line either."
The crew Carpenter Jang kept on the road with him was made up mostly of elderly workers and foreign laborers. Young people avoided the work because it was too hard, and anyone you bothered to train up would up and quit on you.
So Carpenter Jang knows exactly the sorrows of running a small business.
For his last request, he asked me to show him where to hammer in a nail. Apparently he thought my hammering was clumsy enough that I might hurt myself. I waved him off with a laugh.
"A friend of mine is on his way over with furniture he designed himself. We should place the furniture first, then decide where the nails go."
"So this is the high school friend who did your interior design?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good man, that one. I could tell just from the interior work—he's someone who understands what a home is worth."
The thought of connecting Ko Min-seok and Carpenter Jang popped into my head out of nowhere. Min-seok handled paperwork beautifully, and Carpenter Jang was hopeless at that sort of thing.
Min-seok could charge by the job for something like that, honestly.
It would be a win for Min-seok, giving him a side gig, and a win for Carpenter Jang, sparing him from tedious paperwork and getting cheated out of money. But I figured I should hear Min-seok's thoughts first, so I shelved the idea for now. I just hinted at it lightly.
"If my friend ever asks for an introduction, I'll give you a call. That would be all right?"
"Why would I mind? He sounds young and capable. I'd love to meet him."
After a long, easy chat, Carpenter Jang drove his truck away, and I perched myself on the windowsill.
The feeling is honestly hard to describe.
I'd watched this house come and go for months, but sitting inside it now, the renovation fully complete, a lump of emotion began welling up in my chest. At last, I had a home of my own.
It was a different feeling entirely from the day I'd bought the derelict shell. From now on, I could fall asleep under this roof every night, eat my meals here, listen to music, scribble down my thoughts, and simply live.
"I'm happy!"
When I tilted my head back, the dark brown rafters and beams and the ink-black pillars stood in striking contrast against the white of the eco-friendly paint. Layering on Mediterranean-style European paint over the dark wood had been an inspired choice. Sunlight, softened twice over through the hanji paper, brought out the texture of the walls and filled the room with a cozy warmth.
But the best part was the simple fact that all of it was mine. The air, the light, everything gathered inside this house—it all existed for me and me alone.
"This is really, really wonderful!"
My heart thumped at the thought that I would finally live in the house I'd always dreamed of. Unable to hold back the smile spilling across my face, I leaned against the window frame and gazed at the western sky as the sun went down. I felt like I could stay like this all day.
How long had I been sitting there? Down on the village road, a vehicle was winding its way up toward the house.
Beep beep!
Ko Min-seok was riding shotgun in the truck. Two workers sat in the back, and in the truck bed I could make out furniture wrapped in plastic—sinks, tables, beds.
"There he is. My friend and my furniture."
I clambered over the windowsill and hurried outside, just in time to see Min-seok climbing down from the truck. The house sat a level above the lower yard, so I stopped at the top of the steps and waved down at him.
"You've been working hard! Just come on up here!"
"It turned out even better than the photos. And the village is gorgeous, too."
Like me, Min-seok was Seoul-born, and Gangwon Province had only ever been a place he passed through now and then on business trips. Maybe that was why he seemed to feel like he was on vacation.
"You should've come a little earlier. Carpenter Jang—the man who restored this house—was here until just a while ago. He was curious about you."
"I'll pay my respects tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? You're staying the night?"
"Is that a problem?"
Min-seok pulled a bottle of wine out of his bag.
"You planned to sleep over?"
When I made a face of mock outrage, Min-seok asked, "What, you don't want to put me up?"
"You lunatic."
I clattered down the steps and gave his shoulder a light swat, shooting him a sidelong glance. "Drinking with a friend, staring into a fire, talking till dawn—that sounds great to me. But your wife is going to hate my guts."
"She took the balance payment you sent and went traveling with my mom and the kids."
From drawing up the renovation proposal and getting it approved by the county office to designing the interior and all the furniture—Min-seok had thrown himself into every bit of it, which was the only reason this house had turned out this beautiful. I'd wired him his pay and the furniture costs across four installments altogether.
That's enough for the whole family to travel abroad and still have money left over. And they went domestic?
When I tilted my head at him, Min-seok chuckled sheepishly.
"We have to move to a new jeonse place, so we had to settle for a trip within the country."
"But why do you look so happy about it?"
His entire family had gone off traveling and left him behind, yet Min-seok looked positively delighted. At my remark, he scratched the back of his head.
"It's me being relieved. That obvious, huh?"
Apparently, hauling his mother and wife plus two kids on an overseas trip would have killed him. So he had quietly engineered things to slip away himself, letting his mother and wife take the children on a domestic trip instead. Thanks to that, Min-seok grinned, he had three days and two nights of freedom.
"This is the first time since we got married that I'm away from my wife. And honestly, she seems happy about it too. She said she'd pawn the kids off on my mom and have one day all to herself."
"You two are positively giddy, aren't you?"
It was surprising enough that the couple would spend more than two days apart for the first time in their marriage—but that Min-seok would spend that precious opportunity on me was even more unexpected.
If it were me, I'd probably have gone on a solo hike up Jirisan or something.
I was the kind of person who preferred being alone. Min-seok, it seemed, went looking for company the moment he got any time to himself.
Anyway.
"Min-seok, Carpenter Jang recognized your eye. So here's the thing—could you take on some of his jobs now and then? Like a side gig?"
"Are you kidding? I'd love to!"
Min-seok gave the house a careful, appraising look, then shook his head in admiration.
"If you can work with a craftsman this skilled, that's not a job—it's a stroke of luck."
After a declaration like that, there was no reason not to connect the two of them. Working together, they'd generate real synergy. Their personalities seemed like they'd click, too. Played right, Min-seok might even out-earn his day job.
"Then I'll text and set up a visit for the two of us tomorrow."
"Thanks, Yunho."
"Yep."
The moment I answered with a curt yep, Min-seok burst out laughing.
"Ha! There it is. So this is who Kim Yunho really is."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Back in high school, everyone lied during exam season—swore they hadn't studied at all. But you never did. Ask Kim Yunho if he studied, and he'd look you in the eye and say, 'Yep.'"
"I studied, so I said I studied. Simple."
Why would a student hide the fact that he'd done his work? And yet Min-seok looked at that trait in me with unmistakable envy, his eyebrows drooping.
"I could never do that. If I bombed a test even after studying, I'd be terrified of someone saying, 'And that's after all that studying?'"
"Why worry in advance about failing? And anyway, you shouldn't be close with people who point fingers at the ones who fail."
Min-seok applauded at that, full of admiration.
"That's exactly why you're you. You walked out of a job everyone else was desperate just to get into, and now look at you, living like this."
Min-seok cast another lingering look around my beautifully transformed house and sighed.
"I'm seriously jealous. Genuinely, truly, for real. I'm jealous of you, my friend."