The end of "minimally disruptive"

Back when we were still debating whether or not to go forward with the renovation, Wagner looked us in the eye and swore that, most of the time, the renovation would be "minimally disruptive" to our lifestyle--much less intrusive, in fact, than the kitchen renovation over the summer. I had a bit of a hard time believing him on that, given the scale of the work to be done. But for the most part, he's been correct. The work to date has all taken place outside, so apart from losing our garage and having to park our cars in the front, it really hasn't affected our day to day activities.

But that all changed this week, as we are moving into the phase of the project that Wagner warned us would be disruptive, which is the part where we remove two of the kitchen windows, install a skylight, and replace the third kitchen window with a double-wide window.

In preparation for this work, the crew came in and put down butcher paper all over the hardwood floors and a carpet section near the door, to minimize the tracking of dirt and drywall dust and the like. Then they taped up big plastic sheeting to close off the eat-in section of the kitchen where most of the work will be done. (I had to move out the little table and chair set and the ficus we kept there.) One of the plastic sheets had a zipper built in so you could open it to walk through but otherwise leave it fairly airtight, a trick Wagner picked up from his work in hospitals where you have to be very careful about minimizing dust etc. for the patients.

The end result is that we are (so far) getting very little construction dust or dirt in the rest of the house, but the kitchen looks like something out of a Biosafety Level IV lab. ;-)

With any luck this phase won't last long. He's already hung the double window in place, and it looks terrific. (The photo shown above is from before the window was replaced; I'll be posting an "after" photo later.) The prep work has been done for removing the second kitchen window, and the light fixture where the skylight is going to go has been taken out. They're predicting rain in a day or two, so he's planning on waiting until next Monday to install the skylight, so that we're not in the position of having a big hole in the roof all weekend while it's raining.