Renovation (First Day)

Wow, it has been quite a day. Our house renovation started this morning. I was there at 7:45am and it looked like Jesse and Jeremy had been working for an hour already. The huge-ass dumpster was in our back yard when I arrived.

Our neighbors must love us; Some big-ass truck delivered it before I'm usually awake in the morning. In the photo it looks like I'm playing with perspective, but I swear that I'm not. It's really that big. According to the contractor it's a special dumpster where you put both trash and recycling in it and someone picks out the recycling later. Of course, it costs more, but I'd rather pay someone minimum wage to do this than our contractor whatever the hell expensive rate he's charging per hour to do the same. And I'm not going to allow this stuff to be thrown away.

The first thing they did was lay down cheap plywood over our hardwood floors. That (along with some other set up) actually took a couple hours. Then Laurel got to swing the first sledgehammer into the wall.

It was amazingly durable, the wall that is. There were barely any dents. I then brought out the big sledgehammer. I pounded it and still made only small holes.

But I did end up getting through. There had to have been 3 or 4 inches of drywall and then lath and plaster and then lots and lots of wood. I swear to god there were two-by-fours put down flat all the way up the wall. I'll need to confirm tomorrow that that's actually what I saw.

We then went to the coffeeshop for an hour to go over the plans and make some last minute decisions. When we got back the kitchen had been destroyed.

All of my pictures of the day are available here.