*Deep movie trailer voice* They decimated the walls upstairs…They destroyed every hint of the master bathroom…You thought they were done…Coming this summer, the sledgehammers are back to finish the job and this time, it’s personal. From New Plan Productions, you won’t wanna miss Demolition II, The Wedding Planner…
It was big, it was white, and it was gone in under forty-eight hours. Yes, the only thing standing between us and having the wedding at the foot of the staircase was a massive wall. So, naturally, Dad decided we needed to tear it out. In the words of Dad, “It’ll be easy.”
The first day dawned bright and clear…okay I honestly don’t remember how the day was but saying it was a dark and stormy night is both factually incorrect since this took place in the morning, and horribly cliche. Although this is Virginia, dark and stormy nights are fairly common, most especially when you forget your umbrella.
As I readied for work you could hear hammering and prying and crashing as Dad tore apart the ceiling on the bathroom. The spindles had come down earlier that week and were put aside for later use, so for now he was pulling off trim and trying to dislodge the wood from the top.
In fact, that was the scene I was privy to right before leaving. Mom and Dad, trying to get two huge pieces of wood off the top of the bathroom without killing themselves or each other. As you might imagine being the middle of a remodel/restoration, both of these attempts are oft needed.
By the time I left they’d successfully put aside the two large pieces of wood we will later reuse as flooring for the shed. The shed, which will be a project for Future Us…Future Us has a lot of stuff to do.
All seemed to be going well as the bathroom was being taken apart…until Dad ran away from it as the ceiling collapsed, which broke the mop sink in the process. But look on the bright side, we didn’t want the mop sink anyway.
But by far, the best part of the day had to be the first hole in the drywall that opened up a view of the stairs.
By the time I got home that evening the hole had grown considerably. I had a really clever joke to make here about a flatscreen tv and a smart car until I remembered just how big the hole in the wall was and…well it didn’t really work anymore.
Yeah, that’s maybe a tiny bit bigger than your standard flatscreen and definitely bigger than your average smart car.
So that was the first day of demo, but there was plenty more to come…
It began in the wee hours of the morning. Around seven am I was woken to the sound of a power saw which came off like it was coming up through the floor. Well, in a way it was right under the head of my bed so one could imagine why it sounded like that. I slept fitfully for another couple of hours then ventured downstairs. When I turned the corner on the landing and faced the staircase, I was met with a view of the front door.
Okay, it was a view of the front door, Dad on a ladder, and piles of rubble all over the place. But it was the front door, and you could see it from the stairs for the first time in years. I sat on the steps and looked out upon my domain in reverence…all to the comforting melodies of a power saw as Dad worked to get the old framing down.
GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It really bothered me when that wall went up.