Deconstruction

It's funny the way these things come when you need them. I suppose any big project is like that. It's been a frustrating month and so this project was well-timed. There is something incredibly liberating; joyful even, about tearing a room apart with nothing but a hammer, a crowbar and your own hands. I'm not much of a destructive person, but I have to admit this came when I really wanted to tear something apart.

Of course, I'm also a little daunted by the fact that my master bath, although never beautiful, had at least been functional before I got at it. Now, sadly, it has no plumbing with which to function. No toilet, no sinks, no tub, not even many walls. It started just because we were thinking we would replace the tub surround, and so had to pull the tile off the wall. Once that started, we found out that the tile was the only thing holding the wall together - apparently there was long-standing water damage. In any event, what started as a relatively minor project turned into a room stripped down to the studs and about 10 trash bags of rubble.

So - who's coming to visit who knows anything at all about bathroom remodels? Hmmm? Any takers? It would be nice if you had also recently won the lottery, so that I could buy the raw materials. That would help too. Anyone?

Now that the destruction is done, I'm largely ignoring the existence of the master bath and will probably finish the master itself before I wade back into the scary gaping-hole that I've managed to create. Mom and dad helped me to lay the first couple of lines of bamboo in the bedroom so that they're straight and I can carry on over the summer. My parents, like the sane people they are, have escaped to Canada where it is not hovering around the 100 degree mark, but is a normal human temperature. I'm stuck here, sans plumbing.

I'm back, as though from the dead.

Not that I was actually dead, just silent. Given that silence is contrary to my usual state, it is akin to death, perhaps a little death. Actually the problem isn't that I've been silent, only that I've been silent here. In other arenas I've been writing my little hiney off, but thankfully the hiney is back on and normal communications can be resumed.

The house has also been on pause, which is slightly frustrating but now work can begin again post-haste. I do have furniture, which is a thrilling and fascinating luxury. I can't even describe the joys of being able to come home and crash down on my couch to stare lovingly at my fireplace (which is, quite obviously, not lit as it is 4 million degrees (approx) in Texas and my AC unit is frantically trying to keep up).

I've found, that all distractions aside it is much more relaxed now that I actually have finished rooms in which to live. There just isn't the same sense of urgency when I actually have a relatively comfortable living space. Now I'm much more lax about construction - instead of working into the evening I stop at 2:00 pm and enjoy the rest of the day like a sane person. I'm calling that 'progress' rather than 'laziness.'

At this point one of the stumbling blocks I'm running into is finances. Buying paint for the master bedroom isn't a big deal, but buying the amount of bamboo that it's going to take for that floor is a little daunting. Likewise, things like towel racks and soap dishes for the master bath are no problem, but bath tubs and tiles for a shower surround are a little more costly. Given that I'm trying to do this thing without going into debt I may have to meter out projects as finance allows.

In other news, my garden is flourishing and apparently I'm a compulsive plant-buyer. It's just that they looks so sad and lonely in the store all by themselves. I just know they need me to bring them home and make them a part of the family. Only problem with that logic (lack of logic here being entirely discounted as the problem) is that I have limited yard space, and each new plant requires it's own, backbreaking hole. That would be just fine if I had some overall organizational scheme in which I dug big beds in one terrible day of labor and then filled them at my leisure. I just don't. I dig little weenie disconnected holes that require hot sweaty messy work pretty much every other day, and then try to cobble them together into something attractive and interesting. As we speak I have a lonely avocado plant hanging out randomly in the middle of the back yard looking kind of sheepish about being in such an odd spot. The plan (retroactively) is to extend the garden that runs along the back of the porch out to engulf the avocado in an attractive kidney-shaped arm. Of course, this plan was devised after the avocado was in the ground.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back in the saddle!