You’ve probably seen (or heard about) the HGTV show that begins with the questions, “Do you have the guts for a fixer-upper?” And on the show, aptly named Fixer Upper, Chip and Joanna Gaines take tired, run-down houses and turn them into bright, inviting homes.

Whether it’s guts, some other quality, or just watching too much HGTV, this summer my wife Dottie and I bought a tired, run-down 1941 Cape Cod. Out came the kitchen, baths, walls, ceilings, wiring and plumbing. With a little help from our friends — mostly Wyoming Catholic College students — we did the demolition, but have wisely left the rebuilding and restoration to experts.

Painting, on the other hand, is something we’ve done plenty of in the past, so we’re painting. And as I’ve painted, I’ve been listened to my backlog of the Mars Hill Audio Journal hosted by my friend, Ken Myers.

The conversations between Ken and various Christian thinkers, scholars, authors and artists always challenge my thinking, expand my worldview, and introduce me to new books, new ideas and better ways to understand our cultural moment.

Part of that cultural moment, as Myers regularly points out, is our use of technology and the ways that use of technology changes our image of the world, our interaction with the world and our ideas about what it means to be human. “The most thoughtful critiques of technology,” Myers notes in the introduction to an interview with technology critic Nicholas Carr, “address — implicitly or explicitly — the question of how our practices of engaging the world with devices either reinforce or obscure the meaning of the human.”

Understand that I heard this with paint roller in hand spreading nearly twenty gallons of primer onto restored or new walls and ceilings over a floor still covered with drop cloths strewn with the remains of plaster, dust, drywall mud, and primer drips. I would have loved some automation.

But there is no high-tech solution to walls. You dip brushes and rollers into buckets and smear it on to the surfaces where it belongs — avoiding the surfaces where it doesn’t belong. It doesn’t, as they say, take a rocket scientist. It does, however, take a human.

Myers went on to quote Carr from his book The Glass Cage: How Computers are Changing Us:

By taking over difficult or time consuming tasks, or simply rendering those tasks less onerous, the software makes it less likely that we’ll engage in efforts that test our skills and give us a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. All too often automation frees us from that which makes us free.

As I rolled, I reflected not only on my painting, but on the drywall and plastering that preceded it. Dan, our drywall guy, is a master craftsman. Last week I watched as, like Diogenes wandering around ancient Greece with a lantern in hand searching for an honest man, he scanned every wall with a floodlight in hand searching for any uneven, “fuzzy” patches in need of extra sanding.

It made me think of an old TV commercial — for beer if memory serves — in which a guitar maker performs a repetitive and difficult step on the inside of the guitar. An observer asks him why he doesn’t skip that part since, “No one will ever know.” The guitar maker responds, “I’ll know.” Conversation over.

Physical work draws us back to “the world as it actually is” by reminding us of our humanity.

Dan has the same attitude and ethic when it comes to his craft, a craft that, while absolutely vital (A house with no walls is not much of a house), is, like many trades, vanishing. There’s no push-a-button automated solution to drywalling. It takes a human and the workforce is aging as fewer younger people opt for the hard physical work it requires.

Drywall, painting, plumbing, electrical, carpentry and the rest of the trades are hard work, physical work, often dirty work, and, in the final analysis, that makes them human work. Taken together, they build places, homes that become the center of human community and human thriving.

In the interview, Nicholas Carr told Ken Myers that we use computers “to distance ourselves from work, from effort, from the world as it actually is.” Physical work well done draws us back to “the world as it actually is” by reminding us of the physical side of our humanity and the reality of the world as a physical place filled with physical places.

And so, my column written, it’s back to the fixer-upper for a bit more priming followed by (God help me) painting the ceilings. I hate painting ceilings, but the ceilings need painting and I’m still able to do that work. And I’ll have the pleasure of interacting with the world as it actually is and satisfaction of stepping back and seeing the job done and done well.

Note: If you’re not familiar with the Mars Hill Audio Journal, they offer a free trial issue, so try it out.