Remodel Hell - The Pain, The Pain

It’s time for the whining. This is the blog I knew I would write at the end. It’s almost the end. And I feel like whining about all the pain and suffering I went through during this remodel.

1. I reduced all of my clothing to a couple of pairs of everything. Undergarments, pants, shirts, socks. One pair of running shoes, one pair of black dress shoes, one pair of brown. And put all that into the dresser that was shoved into the living room. The rest was bagged up and thrown into a corner of the den. Hence, laundry was every other day.

2. Sleeping in the living room. There was no backboard, so my pillows kept falling off the bed. Because the hallway was encased in brown paper (and perhaps nails), I had to put on slippers every time I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

3. I had to get up at a specified time every morning, around 6:30 am, because the workers were going to show up. Unless I wanted to do my showering with workmen looking into the skylight, well, you get the picture. It was like a job, only I stayed at home and waited for the Invaders.

4. Everything became absolutely filthy over a period of time. Although the construction guys put up a zippered plastic envelope over the door leading to the construction zone, dust seeps out from the sawed timber. Thank goodness I decided early to dispose of the carpet, as it is unbelievably bad right now, covered in God-knows-what. Everything else in the house is covered with a fine veneer of dust as well. And because the workers used my deck as their “shop,” the finish is wiped off completely.

5. The front window vertical blinds were closed for two months because the bed headboard was stationed right in front of them. That provided privacy, for sure, but also made it dark in the living room for two full months. Depressing.

6. My old, make that “current”, bathroom was unavailable much of the time. They were either working on it, or using it (and the latter provided its own problems). There were times when I had to leave, quickly.

7. The lack of privacy, plain and simple.

The actual process of writing this blog has been immeasurably soothing. And I took a look at some of the other blogs involving the words "remodel hell", and found that I wasn't doing too badly. There was one woman whose blog was very funny, very true, who told us all what her typical remodel day was like. She was lucky to see her one construction guy for a couple of hours a day, and chronicled the ridiculosity of a guy who would show up whenever he felt like it, leave when he had to go to his son's school, leave for Home Depot after 10 minutes of work to pick up some nails, ad infinitum.

I feel very fortunate, first with my lack of knowledge that things came out so well, and second that I got an incredibly wonderful group of workers in Martinez Construction. At this point -- mind you, not everything is finished -- I would definitely recommend them, especially for the fool who doesn't know what she's doing.