Day 1

Well, Day 1 is finally here. I met with Sol to give him our garage door opener before I left for work. He said the demolition team would be coming by later in the morning to start their work. If my life were a TV show, when my phone rang around 11:00, the sound of the phone ringing would have been accompanied by the musical 'dum-dum-duuuuuuuummmmmmmm' sting intended to ramp up the tension of the scene.

Immediately upon noticing Sol's name on my cell phone my thoughts started flashing by in rapid succession, each envisioning some increasingly catastrophic discovery. Did they break a water pipe and flood my home? Did they discover rotting beams or mold behind the old cabinets? Did they find a skeleton inside the wall? Did I somehow miss something that I'd have to run home and clean out before they'd continue tearing everything down? (Actually that was the best-case scenario that came to me.)

So what was he really calling to tell me? Well, apparently the demolition crew had a stop to make before getting to our place. The problem is that the crew was shorthanded and they weren't going to be able to finish that job then get to our place and do all the work before 5:00, so it was going to have to wait until tomorrow to get started. On the pissed-off scale of 1 to 10, I was at about 23.8.

OK, remember how in the masthead I promised that readers would be able to learn from my mistakes? Well, here's an excellent piece of advice: Do not schedule any work for January 2. Whether the crew was shorthanded due to extended vacations or extended hangovers, I don't know or care. I just know not to rely on work to be kicked off on January 2.

Once I calmed down I wondered if they couldn't just pick up someone outside Home Depot. How hard can demolition be? All of the stages of construction, this is the one that requires the least skill, right? Get some monkeys, give them hammers and mallets then just sit back and watch the fun. Deciding them that picking up day workers wasn't a viable option because I didn't want to become Lou Dobbs' whipping boy, and the monkey idea didn't work well either because they may fling their poo beyond the boundaries of the kitchen, I became resigned to the fact that work would have to start a day late.

When my phone rang again around 3:00pm and Sol's name appeared in the window I immediately thought of even more potential scenarios for bed news. Perhaps my cabinets weren't ready because they couldn't find an axe to chop down the trees for the wood. I took a deep breath and answered the phone. Sol then tells me that the demo crew has been at my home for a while and they should be finished by 5:00. Now why he didn't bother telling me once he knew the crew was going to make it after all I have no idea but I decided not to pursue it and instead just revel in my blissful ignorance.

Finally I get home and it sinks in that we've progressed well beyond the point of no return. The kitchen is gone. What's left is a dirty, dusty, empty mess. Ever notice that when you move out of a place it always seems like the room is larger once you've moved everything out of it? What's odd is that even with completely bare walls the kitchen doesn't really seem any larger afterward.