Sanded in

Our downstairs floors are being sanded as I write this. I am holed up in my upstairs office as the gentle roar of sanders, hammers setting nails that have popped up too high and a powerful vacuum seeps through the floor. The floors will be stained tonight and the fumes will be pretty strong, so we'll retreat to our bedroom and hope it's warm enough to have the windows open through the night. The kitchen cabinets are covered and taped off with sheets of plastic, so there's no access to food or drink. I can reheat the leftovers from last night's takeout dinner on the grill out back--I just hope the clouds outside don't open up at lunchtime.

I enjoying sitting in the parking lot of McDonald's eating my breakfast this morning. I haven't been out to breakfast in about a year. I was disappointed that the sausage patty was so much fattier than I remembered, but I like their pancakes (a "top secret" version of their recipe uses 7-Up, and I suspect that's the secret; I've made them at home and they taste pretty much the same). I usually eat a healthy breakfast, so today I ate the hash browns, biscuit with jelly and the pancakes. I figure it balances out all my healthy breakfasts so far this year.

The guys who'll replace the insulation in the basement and re-sheetrock the garage ceiling will arrive this afternoon, at which time there'll be one crew sanding and staining the first floor (the Clean floor) as another crew sends dust and fiberglass fibers floating through the basement level (the Dirty floor). It's odd to be shut out of my own living space by a Dirty crew and a Clean crew at the same time. Unfortunately, we'll need to pass through the Clean zone to go out to eat and run errands, but that's what door mats and stocking feet are for.

Everything we had on the first floor is in a big storage locker out in the driveway. It blocks the garage, so our cars sit in the driveway, and I have to be sure to move mine up to the street in the mornings before the trucks arrive so I won't be trapped.

All of this disruption will only last a week. By the weekend, I expect we'll be moving everything back in. The floors will be clean and new; the furniture will probably be rearranged a bit, so there'll definitely be a feeling of renewal. We'll have the rental company take the container away; we'll park our cars in a garage with a new ceiling; and we'll forget in a week or so how intrusive it all was.

Then, in what I hope will only be a couple of weeks, we'll put the house up for sale. If it sells quickly (as the McDonald's ads used to say: hey, it could happen!) we'll go through the whole process of moving out again in a month or so! [When that happens, though, we'll hire movers. My wife, son and I (mostly I) moved everything out this time.] If it takes a long time to sell, at least it'll be clean and finished for our own enjoyment.

I'll probably take some photos before we move everything back in; then people can see what it looks like when it's empty. I guess that counts as an unexpected bonus.

The problem with working at home at a time like this is that I can't really get away from the reality that our home is torn apart. If I want coffee, I have to drive to get it. If I'm working quietly at my desk or drawing table, listening to music, the sound of destruction and repair is still in the background.

Of course, I don't live in Japan, or in the wake of a tornado, so maybe I shouldn't complain. In a week or two, things will be back to normal for us. I guess it's not that bad when I look at it that way.