{"id":30599,"date":"2020-05-28T00:08:06","date_gmt":"2020-05-28T07:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=30599"},"modified":"2020-05-28T00:08:06","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T07:08:06","slug":"our-remodel-has-kept-us-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/our-remodel-has-kept-us-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Remodel Has Kept Us Company — We’ll Miss the Carpenters, the Electricians and the Pile Drivers. Sheltering at Home Week 11"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"man-cooking-in-den\"<\/a>
We’ve set up a temporary kitchen in our den. Jon cooks with an electric skillet. I take the dishes downstairs to wash in the bathroom sink. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sheltering at Home Week 11. Wednesday, May 27, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

A house remodel? “It’s legalized home invasion,” our contractor warned as we got ready to sign the contract. “We come in and we take over the place.”<\/p>\n

And so they did. They took over the place — a major part of it, anyway: the deck, the living room, the dining room and part of the kitchen. On and off since Nov. 1, it’s been people coming and going. Carpenters. Electricians. HVAC technicians. Pile drivers.<\/p>\n

And it’s been nice.<\/p>\n

Honest. Our remodel has kept us company all these weeks. It’s actually been pleasant having workers — people — in our house. Jon and I have been sheltering at home since early March, so the invasion has felt more like an old-fashioned open house, with living, breathing (through masks) people appearing unannounced at our front door.<\/p>\n

Coronavirus Stats Are Going Up Around Us<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The coronavirus is still out there, threatening everybody’s life, livelihood and sense of smell. And with the social distancing guidelines easing up, my infectious disease doc<\/a> tells me to be more vigilant than ever. New cases will increase — modestly, everybody hopes. But increase they will.<\/p>\n

So here we are at home, still, with construction proceeding apace.\u00a0We’re glad the work is finally getting done.<\/p>\n

But we’ll miss it. We’ve enjoyed — yes, enjoyed — the comings and goings of all those workers.<\/p>\n

We can’t see them through the wall of protective plastic sheeting. But we can hear the noise and the chatter (English, Spanish, Chinese).\u00a0 The commotion,<\/p>\n

\"picture-frame-floor-finish
Our new red oak flooring will have the same picture frame pattern as the 1950s hardwood floor in the living room.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

starting at 8 a.m. sharp, assures us that the human race lives on and we’re still part of it.<\/p>\n

As I said, our remodel has kept us company all these weeks. And it’s been nice.<\/p>\n

Until this week.<\/p>\n

This is the week the floor guys arrived.<\/p>\n

They brought hammers, crowbars, sanders. The plastic walls shielding us from hostile microbes do nothing to shield us from the pounding, sawing, buzzing and scraping going on in our kitchen.<\/p>\n

We’ll be glad when the floor guys leave and take their crowbars with them.<\/p>\n

Our Remodel Has Kept Us Company — Now What?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

But what then? Won’t it get awfully quiet around here? Just Jon and me and our beautiful new deck, our open concept kitchen, and nobody looking in on us but the backyard squirrels?<\/p>\n

Not to worry. As I write, a bright young landscape designer is working on plans for a new patio. There will be jack hammers. There will be cement mixers. There will be truckloads of stone. There will be noise and dust.<\/p>\n

There will be people.<\/p>\n

More Sheltering in Place Chronicles at “I Let the Maytag Man Into the House, and Here’s What I Learned About Human Nature.”<\/a>\u00a0More pictures of Jon in our den at “One Broken Ankle and Two Lives Grind to a Halt.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"our-remodel-has-kept-us-company\"<\/a>
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that COVID-19 cases in Alameda county now total 2,986,. That’s more than any other county in the Bay Area, including San Clara county, home to Silicon Valley and the first known coronavirus death in the U.S.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"our<\/a><\/p>\n

With the coronavirus sequestering us at home, our remodel has kept us company. It’s brought living, breathing — masked — people into our house. Read\u00a0 more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,41],"tags":[2179,34,1188,29,2274,2278,2182,1155,2184,2279],"class_list":["post-30599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-sheltering-at-home-chronicles","tag-coronavirus","tag-dont-miss","tag-house","tag-jon","tag-loneliness","tag-on-the-funny-sideess","tag-remodel","tag-san-francisco-chronicle","tag-sheltering-at-home","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}