Knocking Down Walls

We are having work done on the house.

We are having work done on the house because we needed a new deck. The old one was so splintery it wouldn't hold paint. The wood was so warped that the bannister didn't even touch the lower railing, it just hug in mid-air, long, rusty nails sticking out of the bottom. There were rotting holes on the stairs that were only going to get bigger.

So we needed a new deck.

Bu it was impossible to talk to Steve about a new deck without three hundred other things coming. up. He'd want to screen in half of it, and then we could knock down that wall in the living room, and the we could get a new front porch, blah blah blah etc. And I couldn't picture what he wanted. When he described it to me I couldn't picture it. Or I pictured something... kind of ugly.

Well, the guys started work a couple of weeks ago. At first, things went kind of quickly. That's how these things go. But then they moved from the deck to the indoors. Without the deck being quite finished. They are waiting on delivery of some stuff, so they are doing what they can.

So they started tearing down this wall. Apparently it isn't just taking a huge hammer and whacking away with it. No, it's more knives and knocking on walls to see if there is anything behind it, and then accidentally dropping tools or wires into the gap you've left behind, and then trying to get those back so you can use them...

And after a day of wall-removal, they started in on the doors to the deck.

Yesterday I barricaded myself in our bedroom, since there was no place to go where I wasn't in the way, and the banging seemed worse everywhere else. And I went downstairs to make myself a cup of tea to find that not only was I missing a wall, but that there was a huge hole in the side of my house. Sure, a door is supposed to go there, eventually, but still.

And this is when I remembered that the first few steps are always the most drastic, and after that there is a long time where nothing looks any different, and you just have a dusty, practically unusable area while they make things functionable.

On the plus side, when it's done, it's going to look fabulous!