Under the Porch

Newsletter 2024-02-22

We’re building a porch. But first, we have to destroy one.

The most surprising part of that statement is that there’s any “we” at all. My father-in-law Bob was supposed to do it by himself. I fully expected to watch from a safe distance while a seventy-two-year-old man performed backbreaking manual labor on my behalf for free. Sure, I planned to step in from time to time if there was something heavy to lift or if I needed to call an ambulance (for me, not for him, after doing the heavy lifting), but beyond that, I intended to be a spectator rather than a participant. That’s not how this renovation is going. From the moment Bob first set foot on my porch, I’ve been out there with him. I’ve gotten worse at avoiding work, which, until now, was my only marketable skill. College me would be so disappointed in who I’ve become. I’m on the cusp of being a responsible adult. The shame is unbearable.

Destroying my porch is a two-person job. Not the destruction part, per se. Bob knows his way around a crowbar. I should remember that if I ever wrong his daughter in any way. But tearing up five hundred square feet of hundred-year-old floorboards generates a lot of waste. Somebody has to chop it up and haul it away. That’s me. I’m a glorified garbage man. Scratch that. There’s no glory, just garbage. We could probably get away with not chopping up the boards. Each one is eight feet long and full of nails. To haul them away, I paid thirty bucks for a dumpster bag that’s supposed to hold 3300 lbs. When I fill it up, I can call the trash company, who, for just over two hundred dollars, will haul it away. (If it seems like there are a lot of numbers in this paragraph, it’s because all of these expenses burn my soul.) If I laid down the boards perfectly in the dumpster bag, I could fit them all in two loads. That’s never going to happen. I lack the necessary Tetris skills, even if the only piece involved is the equivalent of the straight one that spans four lines. It probably has a more technical name, but I refuse to look it up. I’m not going to be the guy who accidentally makes Tetris educational. Recognizing my lack of patience and skill, Bob’s solution was to have me slice up the pieces and toss them in the dumpster bag haphazardly. The chop saw is mostly idiot proof. It didn’t say that on the box, but I’ve kept all my fingers so far, so it must be. The biggest danger is that I’ll accidentally stab myself with a rusty nail. There is a one hundred percent chance I’ll die of tetanus by the end of this project. It was bound to happen. It’s been far too long since I’ve been to the emergency room.

The best and worst part of any renovation on an old house is finding out what all that ancient wood has been hiding.