Under Construction

This story begins with a seemingly straightforward clog in my shower drain. Its resistance to Draino and the absence of my handyman-in-residence, prompted me to call a plumber and my accidental renovation was born. Sadly the culprit was not a gob of slimy hair, but rather the roots from my Portuguese laurel tree infiltrated into the decaying joints of my sewer main.  All of a sudden my $200 service call had snowballed into thousands of dollars of work, and I was sitting at my kitchen table clutching a work order, dying of sticker shock and uncertain how I could possibly explain this problem to my blissfully unaware significant other. There I sat, all alone, confronted with a problem that all homeowners dread, the unexpected blindside of an expensive renovation that I had to go forward with.

Further complicating the issue, my sewer main runs right underneath my porch, and any excavation would necessitate the demolition of it. Luckily my porch could have been knocked over by a strong gust of wind, rotted and soon to be deemed a little hazardous. With the world's cutest, most petit backhoe, the excavator ripped through my front garden, digging a trench system, which, if nothing else, prevented unwanted religious groups and charities from bothering me for at least a month. My lovely lilac tree and cedars became collateral damage, but the masonry surrounding the porch remained intact. 
  

While my chequebook was out, we thought that we might as well renovate the basement at the same time. I will save the basement renovation details for another post, as the twists and turns of that tale are far to extensive for this one post. This huge project takes up a lot of my mental energy, free time and we somehow managed to complete half of it without killing one another, a trades person or the bank.