Wednesday, April 28, 2010

I am a hostage in my own home

The house renovations are in FULL swing. And by renovations, I mean ripping everything out, disrupting my life, never listening to the person who actually lives in this house and making things far worse before they can get near better. And they call that "renovations".

This is forcing heat under the house and up inside the walls to dry out the studs and drywall. The drywall is "not so dry". It will be ripped out later.

On Friday at the end of the day, the electrician that came to install the "spider box" for extra power to warm and dehumidify the water damaged back bedroom. Lyle pointed out exactly which fuses were empty and available, so the electrician used one NOT pointed out and disconnected the garage, fish pond and dishwasher. For the entire weekend. He came back on Monday and fixed that.

A spider box in my house! This is in the bathroom.
The flooring tiles are all gone. So is the toilet.


These floor sucking dryers were taken away on Sunday (I think). The heater/dehumidifier has remained.
The large 2'x3' plastic mats are water suckers.
The big aluminum box is the dehumidifier.


The roofing people came on Saturday (four hours later than they said) tore off all the tar and paper and said instead of being three days to complete the job, they'd be back on Sunday and it would be finished. Of course that meant they didn't come back until Tuesday. And probably only because it was supposed to rain THAT NIGHT (It did but only a little).

The electrician came back on Monday and reconnected the fuse that works the dishwasher and garage and pond pump. On Tuesday, the roofers unplugged the pond pump to plug in their equipment.

While fixing the roof, they managed to shatter the skylight in the hallway.
Skylight on the ground.
Shouldn't that be up in the sky?

Glass went EVERYWHERE. Up and down the hallway more than 6 feet in each direction, and to the sides, into the office where the dogs and I were sitting and into the guest room where we are living during all the renovations. I did not ask them to come in and clean this up. I didn't want anyone dumb enough to break a skylight inside my house to clean it, so I cleaned all that up. The wooden box the glass hit hardest will need to be refinished. I shudder to think what would have happened to me or a dog if we'd been in the hallway.

They had to put a board over the broken skylight overnight. It was so dark in my hallway this morning! I can't believe they did not take out the glass remnants until today. Lyle placed carpets under the danger zone and no one was allowed to polka in the hallway over night. They are back today to fix all that.

Today's interior destruction: we have the workers tearing out the hardwood floor of the bedroom and closet.

Now, instead of working I am keeping the dogs calm and working on a massive headache each day, while the hammers pound all over the roof at the back of the house. The joyful sound of sawing and nail pulling ripping out the floor boards in the room next to me. I can't go into the hallway for fear of falling glass remnants. I worry that pictures may fall off the walls. I’m not sleeping well because there is a constant humming of dryers that can be heard (and felt) throughout the house. When I do start to fall asleep, in the back of my mind I wonder, who is paying this electricity bill?

I just want to shout, “I’M A RENTER! I AM NOT IN CHARGE OF THIS!!!” but then, we’d probably still not have a roof over the back of the house.

I am keeping my eyes on the prize: no more fountains of Versailles.

4 comments:

Murphy Jacobs said...

Such sympathy! I've had two experiences which approach yours but are no where as bad -- one was when we added a room to our old house. A window was removed and drywalled over, and during this it was apparently necessary for the drywall installers to handle our electronic entertainment system -- this was obvious because the little door on the DVD/VCR was broken and both it at the DVR box were covered in drywall mud fingerprints. All was denied, of course.

The second time was during the great hurricane season of 2004 when our roof was damaged and we got in the endless rumba line of people waiting for a repair crew. Luckily, our crew did not break our two skylights nor create much mayhem, but that was only because they didn't have time to screw around. They came and vanished within a week because they had 9 other houses in our area to do. Still, that's a LOT OF BANGING.

*hugs* One day it will be your house again.

Michael Guy said...

OH FOR SHIT's SAKE!! I am so relieved that the skylight didn't cost somebody their noggin'...

What a mess, Jim. Hang in there; you and Lyle need a big fancy-schmancy dinner date night after this is all over!

Christine said...

A house is a house...a relationship is something else - and much, much more important. Just make sure you and Lyle help each other through this - it makes all the difference.
Christine

Tim in the South said...

When I had my house renovated, I lived in a hotel.

Just sayin'.