Days 1 & 2 – An Experience

Well, I made it through the first full day of renovation. I say “I” because my husband has the good fortune to go off to an office every day, leaving me working from home and managing my part of this renovation project.

The first thing I learned is that there are still a lot of decisions I haven’t made. James asked me about saving the curtains/shades and I didn’t think that far ahead. I told him to save the ones from the 2 bedrooms and toss everything from the little room. Even if I end up not keeping the current shades/curtains, at least I’ll have them while I decide. Given inflation and the way the stock market is tanking, I may need to reuse whatever I can rather than buy all new fun items.

The next major revelation had to do with the hooks on the dining room door. The cats and I were nestled on their side of the doors when my husband came home. If I’m on the dining room side of the door, the hook on that side is latched. That means that someone on the kitchen side of the door cannot get in. 🙂 We are now rethinking how to latch that door so when TWO people are in the house, the door works either way. When he locked ME out later that evening *I* went through the zip door in the front hall. Not especially convenient if you are carrying something, but it worked.

I’m wondering how many days/weeks/months it will take before my auto pilot stops trying to go through the front hall into the living room. I am working at my “desk” and someone calls me and I start to head to the front hall via the living room, and then realize I need to back-track around the dining room table, unhook the door, hook the door and go through the kitchen to the front door. 🙂 Can I count all those extra steps as EXERCISE????

I was too hyper to sleep last night. My husband went up to bed and I stayed with the cats. I could tell sleep was not going to come easy so I made up the recliner in the sunroom to sleep there. The positive side of that is that I do not feel compelled to shut all the downstairs windows if I’m sleeping down there. When I thought about it, I wondered why I feel that me sleeping downstairs would be any deterrent to someone trying to break in. It’s not as if the would-be burglar can SEE me sleeping upstairs or downstairs. I’m so hard of hearing these days, especially with window fans going in every window, I probably wouldn’t even HEAR someone coming in. And what would I do if I did???

What I did hear at 2:00 am was my neighbors’ dogs barking. Yes, the next-door dogs. I know their barks well. Every Saturday morning my neighbors evacuate their house so they won’t be there when the cleaning service arrives. Every Saturday morning the 2 dogs begin barking non-stop until the cleaning service arrives, and then again until the owners return home to shush them. Please tell me why the dogs were either (1) outside at 2 am barking or (2) inside with open windows barking and no one in the house to shut them up. Yes, I AM a little cranky this morning – I didn’t sleep very well. Why do you ask?

We are here at Day 2 – demolition day. James said the truck would probably be here around 8am, he’d be here by 8:30. I had a text from Don at 6:11 this morning saying they’d be there at 8am to start. No problem. I was up by 6:20, fed the cats, cleaned the litter box, dressed and on my morning 2.8 mile walk. Showered & dressed at 7:50. James arrived around 8:15. No truck. Ooooh, around 9:30 James came in a bit shame-faced saying that the truck was a little delayed. Apparently they had a full truck at EOD yesterday and had to go empty it before they could come here. *grin* Back in the days of the kitchen renovation I’d probably have found this all very annoying. But I’m an older and wiser woman now, with a lot less energy to get all het up about what time the demo starts.

I was doing some work when I realized I heard truck noises and men calling. I went out to see the action. They were all a little hyper about having backed the truck down my narrow driveway. They need to park it under the 2nd floor hall window so they can toss things out the window into the truck. The willow bush is a bit cramped but I’m sure it will recover. This is not its first rodeo with trucks down the driveway. The garage has gained more STUFF. I asked James to set up one of my folding tables so I can take boxes from the front hall and store them on the table in the garage. The sink is way too heavy to move, but if I can get the lighter boxes out that would be pleasing. 🙂

Listening to the scraping, crashing, banging, thunking happening above my head. The whole house is shaking. BC is under the couch (I think, I can’t actually see her anywhere ) and WC was sleeping happily on the couch in the sun room while they tossed the easily-tossed items. Now even WC is awake as the whole house shakes to the demolition. 🙂 It’s really happening! *cringes at a particularly LOUD bang*