Damage Control

BEFORE:

WITH EVERYTHING OUT:

Last week, we sent our little boy off to Vacation Bible School ("Crocodile Dock")... and while he was safe in the arms of the Wild Woman, we began the daunting challenge of remodeling Josh's room...and as usual, we bit off more than we were expecting. Once again, we had a room that had been made over thirty years ago, with particle board flooring that had been damaged badly when the pipes broke those many years ago. Again, we suspected there were issues (the warped beams were a good clue, and the questionable parts of the floor were another), but we didn't have the time or resources to allot to them until this last week, so we just put down some strong boards on any place we worried about, and kept on trekking. Not five minutes after the first protective board was moved out of place, Jon put his foot down, and this happened:

It was an omen,but we didn't know it yet. This room was going to do all in its power to KILL us (or at least give us many, many reasons to thump severely on each other). Call it Amityville-lite -- all of the horror, half the caffeine. As my mother quipped, it was such a brilliant move for us to pick the most humid days of the year to try to work in a room with no cross ventilation.

We were suckered in by the floor...it was freakishly easy to rip it out thanks to the pipe-flood, and for a little bit, we actually thought we were going to be ahead of the game. Then, we came to the realization that the load-bearing walls had been attached to the flooring (that we were trying to remove), and not to the floor beams. We also found out that there was a section of wall that hadn't been insulated in the first place (when they moved the window)...and that once again, the insulation beneath the floor had taken in water from the pipe-flood, and then fallen on to the ground and disintegrated. That we could take care of...unfortunately, the problem of correcting the walls safely remained...and became a back and forth argument between the home improvement team for three days. It would only have been a prolonged discussion for two, but Jon had inhaled copious amounts of dust when we ripped floor and walls, and became very, very ill...complete with high grade fevers and chills the entire first night (and much of the second day)...and it was all he could do to function the next day. Love my husband's side of the family, I really do...but no project can be completed without the males (primarily Harry, Tim, and Larry) grousing at each other over every nail placement. Believe it or not, it's a process that actually does work for them. Somehow, they will eventually hit on the best solution, but I have a really hard time waiting the process out...and a harder time listening to it when I'm on the outside of the current "discussion". I mused to myself that I knew where all the measuring tapes were, ...that I could step out of the room and let them settle things the old-fashioned way...but it didn't _quite_ get to that point. Almost....awfully dang close, but Not _Quite_.

On the first day, we had three fans going in there, and that was a foolish, foolish mistake. The dust went everywhere. Regretfully, we put our fans aside, and began spritzing the room with a water bottle to keep the dust down. Jon and I tried to wear masks (no one else seemed interested), but they kept making us overheat more, and with mine, I could wear the mask and overheat AND have my glasses fogged up constantly...and be completely unable to see any of the lurking, rusted nails underfoot. Gack!

So here's a lovely combination : take three and a half days of no floor; a frantic mother missing her sprog terribly, and absolutely convinced that her three-year old was going to have a homesick meltdown and beg to come home to the bombsite house; a hot, airless room; four guys who argued their way from beginning to end of project; and my usual lack of tact and timing. All of us were in early and left late every day, and it still took forever to get the walls corrected...Jon was doing the lion's share, Harry was of course giving him a run for his money. Torey turned out to be a wizard with a saw blade, and Tim, though truly frustrated that he couldn't do more, brought his experience as a carpenter to bear and called out instructions like a four-star general. Work was getting done...things were happening...but they were simply not things that seemed visible...and they were not things that got a floor down. Now, I know this may come as a shock to you, but I loathe, LOATHE!!!! remodeling. Mom and Dad always had a couple of projects going on...the house always had at least one room underway, if not more...and at our house, everyone piled in, beat a path through the room and then got the rest of house back where it belonged. In this case, the impression that I got was that I really wasn't wanted in Josh's room...(and since I will concede that my personal tension may have been ratcheting up the mood levels substantially, I kind of understand that) and Jon kept throwing busywork at me like sorting through boxes or working in other rooms in the house. However, in my mind, I needed to be working in Josh's room, not puttering around and this just raised my stress level more. By the thousandth time I heard the phrase, "Well, it's really just a one person job." I was honest-to-God going to change my name to Norman Bates and just go flippin' Hitchcock-ian on all of them. I kid you not, I could feel the blood slamming up my neck, and I actually saw white and black spots in front of my eyes. Our physical resources were limited. Torey helped occasionally, but was more there to help Tim...Tim really wanted to be in the thick of it, but sadly wasn't up to it (as it was, he pushed himself far too much, and was in agony for days after the fact)...it was Jon and Harry chugging through...and I (because of my lack of carpentry knowledge) was relegated to the role of aggravated (and, who am I kidding? Aggravating) bystander and occasional gopher.

While in one sense, Jon's desire to have the other rooms sorted out would have made sense, everything from Josh's room, including the things from the demolished shelves we HAD been using for storage was now everywhere else in the house. I had no place to put anything...I couldn't move around my own house...especially since all of Josh's furniture was crowding everything else up...Tim and Harry and Torey and Jon continued their "pronounced and prolonged discussion" regarding every conceivable nuance (at one point, it literally took me forty minutes just to drag a supply list out of them), but the project still seemed (from my now very tensed and highly frustrated perspective) to be really and truly bottle necked...all effort seemed focused on one aspect of the project, but no one was working on prepping other parts of the project. In my head, I felt the hours slipping by like they were heavy rocks sliding down my back. I was thinking, "We can multi-task. I can hammer some nails into those beams on the other side of the floor...Someone could string wire for the insulation as I went through...we could have this done and ready to go for when they wanted to move on. That way it wouldn't take as long to deal with it." Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trying to voice that opinion at the exact moment that everybody had finally had enough, and Tim and Torey left the project all together. Harry had already "done his time" for the evening, but came back from bowling to try to help us some more. Jon and I were hot and tired...and I continued on my tact parade...and this led to us snapping at each other...Something that rarely, RARELY happens... but by the end, we called it quits and were almost smiling at each other again. We (meaning Jon) decided that I would have to go down to Mom's to help with Josh, and Jon and Harry and Larry would do what they could to pull it all together. I hated the situation...Not only could I not help with the one part of the project I actually would have been good at, but Jon was forced to miss Josh's first ever song and dance program.

Jon hated breaking his promise to Josh...but before I left, things FINALLY, FINALLY started going our way. Larry came in to check the wiring (and thank God he did, as we found three patches of bare wire!!!!) Harry, bless his heart, helped Jon get the floor down, and while I hated to leave at that point, Josh, once I told him I was going to stay for a few days seemed to relax a little (though I somehow still managed to remain completely wound for sound the entire visit)...and I was pelted by running Josh kisses for two hours after my arrival...I was so grateful for the Bible School set up...it kept him occupied...it kept him busy...it tired him out too much to dwell on the homesickness, but there was still tension in him...(and I can't honestly say if it was the length of the visit....or if he was wicking it off of me). I discovered literally an hour before his program that the video camera may have been plugged in, but that it wasn't charging. Thankfully, I got the kinks out and managed to swing 91 minutes of charge...but as the program drew on, I started panicking again...I was getting a message from the camera telling me that the tape had Five Minutes left...then Four Minutes Left...Then Three Minutes Left...and at Two Minutes Left...the program was over, and the kids were out of the sanctuary. Josh was the youngest participant in this year's Bible school (not including the baby "mascots" who really couldn't do much more than coo and goo) by eighteen months, but according to Mom, he held his own. Back at the ranch, Jon (with Harry and Larry's help) was a sanding fiend. Much of his time was spent literally waiting for paint to dry, but he finally got it done, whipped together Josh's new shelving, and got most of Josh's things back in place. Throughout the process, we had a series of casualties in the furniture contingent...One chair broke...our dining room table imploded under the extra, unaccustomed weight of more boxes and tools...Josh's changing table sadly did not make it through the process (which may have been just as well, the old hoss had hung in and gone above and beyond the call for months and months after a normal table would have just keeled over and died...and we had a moment of silence for its passing)...our shop vac started having issues and may not recover...and right now my front porch and the side of the house look an awful lot like a set from The Beverly Hillbillies, but

the room,

when we finally came home,

was just unbelievably cool!!!!

... Josh was absolutely thrilled...and so was I....


Now, if only I just didn't have to put the rest of the house back together again.




We'd like to take this time to thank every member of our families for truly going above and beyond the call to help us get this completed. Jon, Tim, Harry, Larry, Torey, Mom, Dad...and all of the Bible School-ians of Roscoe United Methodist, you have our deepest thanks and appreciation. And I know that I personally gave everyone of you reasons to wring my neck several times over, and I am also very grateful that none of you rose to the bait...



From Jon and I....and especially from Josh, Thanks so much for all that you have done.