Tag: plans

Boxed Out

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I had vowed to never move again. I was 9.5 months pregnant that last time. The doctor told me not to lift any boxes. She commanded me to sit in the new house and point to where I wanted others to move things.

While I packed many boxes, I followed doctor’s orders and did not move any furniture. I unpacked most of the stuff and put the stuff away. I climbed up on chairs to do the putting away thing.

I painted the brown pegboard white. The Spouse caught me, standing on a cafe chair with a paint brush poised. There was no stopping me. There was a baby to be born. I didn’t have much time.

After the moving madness was done, two weeks before our first child came into this world, I announced to The Spouse–and with all imaginable drama that a very pregnant person can conjure–that I was never moving again. This was it. Throw my corpse in the yard when I’m done with this life. Done. Finito. Fini.

And, today, here I am. Twenty five years later. Sitting among a pile of boxes that need to be packed up. Because I’m never leaving this house.?.

Two weekends ago I started packing. I packed three boxes with books. I took some I wasn’t keeping to the free little library. And others that I don’t want and that don’t belong to me are in a pile to be reviewed by The Spouse. So I packed three boxes. In the grand scheme, three boxes is the equivalent of zero.

Last weekend, I was going to really get stuff done. I had a goal of packing ten boxes. I emptied a bookshelf and the media cabinet (except for those four things I left). I cleared the mantels of things. I transferred a box full of bar and glassware to a neighborhood victim who succumbed to my listserve offer. I said it was free, but she had to take whatever I put in the box.

I packed up two “medium” boxes with dishes that became so heavy before I filled them I had to switch to topping them off with table cloths. Medium wasn’t strong enough for what I needed to load.

I emptied the server in the dining room, mostly shifting items for later packing. Doesn’t show much progress moving things from a shelf to a staging spot. I know this.

I packed eight more boxes and successfully dumped out about four more, so, if I am generous to myself, I exceeded my goals.

Except I look around the accretion stuff over of the Big Guy’s time on Earth and realize that I have done absolutely nothing.

Ab. So. Lute. Ly. Nothing.

On the other hand, all will be done. Just in the nick of time. Because that is exactly how things happen. In real life. I have a few more weeks.

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Demo Derby

The demolition plan for the kitchen area.

I asked the team to bring the updated plans. I just had the kitchen elevations in hard copy. Nothing else.

“Elevations” is part of my new vocabulary. See how I just threw that out there, as if it wasn’t a term that I learned three weeks ago? It’s amazing how quickly you can assimilate new language. For those of you not fluent in whale, in this context, elevations are the wall view of the plans, versus the flyover view. The elevations show the relative height of the cabinets, where the tops of the windows line up and how the microwave stacks over the wall oven.

I don’t know the name of the top-down plans. Floor plans? I think that’s right.

I did have some of the drawings electronically. I like them that way because I can pull them up on my phone, tablet and laptop. I can zoom in on specific features. I don’t like the pixelated versions in that I have a hard time getting the overall and relative picture. So I requested the printouts.

The printed plans are oversized. You can run your finger along the outside wall, rather than hiding half of the room behind a stubby digit. You can trace the new door opening while standing in the as-is room and squinting to see the future. You can hold the page an arm’s length away, below where the new wall of windows will be, and still make out the details in the drawing and pretend your other hand is resting on the new kitchen island.

My printer can’t print to that size of paper. The architect’s printer can. They printed out everything that was updated, and there were bonus pages. There were drawings with circles with little points–some with the points exiting one side and some with the points spread around the circle like a compass. The circles were linked together with bowed lines. These were the electrical drawings.

There was a color-coded set with red numbers and green numbers that corresponded to the color of the kitchen cabinets. There was a framing plan that was unfathomable to me. These documents made me very happy that I hired someone who understands them.

There were also two pages that had the current floor plan. This was awesome because they lined up with the to-be plans so I could get a better relative idea the changes.

On closer inspection, it dawned on me that the as-is plans are not there for my comparative pleasure. I saw shaded areas that, according to the legend, are areas marked for demolition. Whoa! Demolition. That’s a serious word.

The shady spots are along a few walls where doors or closets are moving. There’s a few spots where the floor is coming up and being replaced by tile. And there’s the back three-quarters of the house marked for wrecking. The kitchen, the pantry and the bathroom, and the wall that encases the stairway–all with X’s marking the spots where they will be razed and remade.

And reused and recycled, too. There are a bunch of notes in the margin instructing the contractors to carefully remove and replace boards and trim.

I like that demolition and destruction are on the same page as care and reclamation. I like the contradiction and the compliment, the yin yang of it all. I’m finding meaning in everything.

 

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Green Screen

A wall lined with bookshelves, filled with many books and more whatnot.

I’m looking at the bookshelves lining the wall in the den. They are tall. They span from door jam to radiator, filling in all the usable space. They were an attempt to provide a library feel. I’m not sure we got there, but it definitely evokes that storage room feel. 

Where I’m looking right now will be a set of French doors, opening to the hallway. The doorway will be twin to the archway leading to the living room. So where this wall, stacked with a book buffer, currently stands will be a set of doors. I bet they end up with eight or fifteen little glass panels. We will be able to easily see from room to room. 

I really can’t quite see it now, though. I’m trying. Hard. I guess we’re in the imagination stage of the remodel. Where we make decisions based on ideas that seem good translated into line drawings. I feel like I’m acting with a green screen–I can’t actually see what it looks like, but I have to react. 

I’m spending time in the bathroom washing my hands where the appliance garage will be and leaning up against the wall oven. I have to move the back door over three or four feet and squint to see the new windows. My mind wanders to spatial relations. Will the dog food bin fit in the island cabinet? Do I want it there? Do dishes go in one of the roll out drawers? And what about the paper towels? They need to be accessible, but where?

I walk back and forth where the new bathrooms will be, thinking about lighting and the staging of towels and bandaids. I stand just outside where the new doors will be and mime opening and closing them. 

To get some perspective, my eyes dart between the drawings of the windows and the actual windows. I align my body with the frame and turn myself to the left to see how much wall space we’ll have. I think I sometimes open doors here, too. 

Once or twice, at night, I’ve had dream tours. These tours are always fantastical and absolutely wrong. My brain adds extra floors and maybe a slide. The rooms are not like the rooms in the drawings. Once there was a pool outside the kitchen door. I don’t want a pool. The colors are wrong, too. My sleeping house is viewed through hazy filters, like the old fashioned ones in Instagram.  There’s too much yellow, or it’s way too rosy. 

The next morning I wake up and pull the plans up on my phone, and walk through the rooms as they’ll be–hanging towels, pulling deodorant from the medicine cabinet, stepping into the imaginary walk-in closet. I hope that they don’t put any toothy CGI monsters in when we get to post-production.  

Posted on by docthink 1