Casualties

With any renovation project, there is a certain amount of casualty expected. I'm not talking about people falling off the roof or anything, as hopefully we have hired a responsible and safe crew to get this job done (after all - we hired this crew so that we wouldn't fall off the roof, thereby avoiding repeating history). But there is always an expectation of some blood and destruction of certain areas that, well, maybe they were supposed to remain intact.

We have had a few minor incidents. If you are following this blog, then you have already read about our flood. That was certainly a casualty but could have been so much worse. Another example is that on the first day of demolition, as the crew was cleaning up for the day, they broke a window pane on the front of the house. Not really a big deal, but it can be considered a casualty since there are exactly four windows outside of the barn that we were planning on keeping and this was one of them. Whoops!

Another example is in the future guest room. This room was supposed to be spared of any demolition. It is currently where all of our upstairs furniture lives and was, as much as possible, a dust free zone. But some over zealous demolition in the room next door carried the party into our future guest room.



But there are some casualties that are both unexpected and unacceptable, and we have unfortunately had one. At the beginning of the job, all contractors are told that there is one rule - do not go near the Rhodedendrums. While the Rhodedendrum is generally a pretty typical plant, we have the good fortune of having Rhodies that are older than most of you reading this blog - actually, probably all of you. As Rhodies have largely been bred now to be ornamental, it is very difficult to find Rhodies today that will grow to be large. Our Rhodies are about 35 - 40 feet tall. Any neighbor that we meet immediately asks what we are planning to do with them, as they have "grown up loving them." We couldn't tear these out if we wanted to and if we did, we could probably never replace them.

It was a simple request to our crew - stay away from them.

And it was unfortunately ignored.





In the grand scheme of things, this is not a huge casualty. We made it seem that way with our contractors so that there would not be any more similar incidents. In the future, all dumpster deliveries that go awry should be aimed squarely at the house. Let's damage the areas of the property that are already under duress. If we're lucky - the whole place will fall down!