The Deep End: Part 2 of a 4 part series

"The Walls Talked."

(if you've just joined us, see part 1: http://freddiesmom50x50.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-deep-end-part-1-of-4-part-massive.html

As our contractor took his hatchet to the walls, he peeled away 1976 like a bad sunburn.  I was a little sad, because I painted these words in 1998, the only thing that let me tolerate that paneling:

Note: the 'other' graffiti on that wall was a one-day-special only.  

I took a picture of it.  I also kept only the word “friends”, because I’m not a hoarder and therefore will only save one piece of garbage and not all eight pieces. 

I knew he was hauling this paneling to the dump, a place where he said people love to shop after they’ve bottomed out at Lowe's.  I pictured nice people looking through the paneling at the dump and reading it like archeologists at a dig.  “Little…..Houses….Have…..Lots of Room….For…....WHAT?  What is the last word?  Drugs?  Shoes? Cats?  I CAN'T SLEEP!  I MUST know the mystery word!!”  

Anyway, as I came back from my landfill hallucinogenic comedy, I joked with my contractor that maybe he’d find cash in those walls, from way back in the days when people hated banks.  Like back in 2008.  He winked, and said, “You’d be SURPRISED what we find in walls.”   

Holy tomato, I’ll bet he’s going to find porn in there.  Just my luck, he’ll think it’s ours.  And if I deny it, I’ll look like I doth protesteth too much. 

Please don’t find porn. 

Ten minutes later, he said, "Hey, lookie here!” as he walked over to me.  I tried to look calm as I saw a magazine page with skin.  Lots of it.  Slimy, tanned skin glistening with oil, lots of abs and muscles 

and 
     not
           very much 
                         c-c-c-c-c-c-clothing.

"Hey, that doesn’t look like cash!"  I chirped.  As my girlfriend Deb once said, I was ready to fold like a cheap chair. 

I barely know the guy, and now we’ve got to look at PORN together?  This is NOT how a remodel is supposed to go. 

He unfolded the centerfold for the big reveal. 

Oh, there was skin alright.  From the WWF…'Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant' posing for a smackdown.  In their little wrestling panties.    

I FRICKING LOVE YOU!  I said to myself, because the 1987 date also cleared me from having anything whatsoever to do with hiding that stuff in the walls.  

It might even be worth something.  I’ll be danged…..there really was money in them there walls.

But I digress yet again.

As the walls were coming down, we looked at the electrical outlets.  There were only three in the entire room, so help me God.  Overworked for decades and on the brink of combustion.  Wired only for 1942, back when the little lady of the house just needed it for her vacuum OR her butter churn.   When we moved in, we unfairly asked these outlets to join the 21st century, hike up a leg and prepare to power nineteen computer peripherals and a mother of a tower. 

I saw him remove the outlet covers which had black singe marks on them from some unfortunate misfires, but I said those were not our fault and were probably put there the same year as the wrestling picture.  

He scratched his head, politely not asking how the hell we Hoffmanns have not burned in our beds.   

So, we were on track to upgrade that room.  The best upgrade, the baseboards, would seal us in like a hamster in a ball.
  

When the window was put in, I almost cried.  For the first time I could not hear the trash trucks, the neighbors arguing, nor the tugboat in San Francisco.  Which meant the neighbors could no longer hear any of my future F-bombs.  A win-win. 

Windows: Before and During

 

Bad window.  Bad window treatments.

Good window.  No window treatments.  No spiders.

Click here for Part 3: http://freddiesmom50x50.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-deep-end-part-3-of-4-part-series.html