Last year Dave and I decided to do major work on our 26-year-old house. In March, it was all new windows. In September, it was all new upstairs flooring. The window replacement was intrusive, but we kept to our own space and basic routine. We did have to move furniture away from the windows, but most of it didn’t need to leave the room. In fact, we didn’t often need to leave the room. This did mean moments of loud pounding and the occasional rush of cool air into our space. But it worked.
The flooring – that was a different story. Before I tell it, let me take you back.
Before Dave and I moved into our house in Colorado in 1996, we had watched it being built. We even got involved in the planning and design. Why not? The whole street was a construction site! We were lucky to work with a builder who had good options for each house model and allowed us to inject our own ideas into the layout. We extended a foundation wall 4 feet, which meant a larger basement, a larger great room/nook on the 1st floor, and larger 2nd and 3rd bedrooms on the 2nd floor. We also absorbed the 4th bedroom into the master suite and combined the shower and tub space. This gave Dave a dressing area with closet and doubled the size of the master – er, my – closet: the Taj MaCloset.
Dave in his workshop soon after we moved into our house, March 1997.
After we moved in, construction continued. Dave always had a project going, and I would help. He installed extra shelves in the Taj MaCloset, and I agreed to finish the walls where screws protruded outside of the unit. I covered the screw heads with compound and then sanded it all down, but I guess never repainted. Several years later I noticed that the screws and compound had disappeared under a smooth layer of paint. “When did that happen?” I wondered. Dave had done the work without fanfare. Even though I hadn’t held up my end of the deal, he had my back.
Over time, we got busy on separate projects. I designed the landscaping and hired a company to do the work. Dave built furniture and put in a vegetable garden. We weeded, harvested, and cooked. Many years went by and life was sweetly routine. And at times, although the weight of daily living was balanced between us, we each took a part of it and carried it alone.
Still with me? Okay!
Jump ahead to Summer 2022. We had new windows and loved them. Now it was flooring time. The installation was limited to the 2nd floor, so it couldn’t be harder than the window project. Right? We picked out carpeting and vinyl tile at Carpet Masters and scheduled the installers to arrive the third week of September, on a Tuesday at 9:00am. I remembered all the projects we had worked on together and I looked forward to this.
A bathtub full of books before flooring installation, September 2022
Two days before the work began, Dave and I started moving furniture and odds and ends out of the 2nd floor. Dave used the hand truck to get a heavy dresser, a jewelry chest, and two desks down to the living room. I moved the books from my office into the guest bath tub. Dave then dismantled the bookcases and brought the boards downstairs. The lighter stuff we carried to the basement. Some of the pieces were awkward, so we carried them together. I felt the old connection.
By Monday, I had finished cooking lunches for the week and we had tackled the biggest and most awkward-to-move pieces. Except for our king-sized bed. We were willing to sleep on the floor for one night but no more. The futon mattress had not moved from that room since the late 1990s when the dudes from Front Range Futons had hauled it in. It was heavy and bulky and hard to move. We wanted to leave it for last. And this gave Dave time to come up with a detailed plan.
Early Tuesday morning, we moved the rest of my office furniture downstairs, and cleared out more from Dave’s office and the master. Just after 9:00am the three-man crew arrived. One guy introduced himself as Victor. The other two were brother Francisco and cousin Toni.
My office after new carpeting was installed, September 2022.
Victor told us his plan: the crew would lay out vinyl tile in the bathrooms upstairs at the same time they installed carpeting. Hmm. So much for our plan. But Dave acted fast. “That sounds great,” he said, “as long as you leave the master bedroom to last.” Victor agreed: our bedroom would be worked on only after the other two bedrooms were completed. The morning of the last day, we would move our bed together. It would be kind of fun.
The installers set up and began work. I sat at my laptop in the dining room intending to write. Above my head, the work crew ripped up flooring and pounded nails. I could hear Francisco and Toni call encouragement and warnings to each other as they worked while music – Mariachi? – played in the background. I couldn’t focus. It wasn’t just the noise and having to share my space with stacked furniture and miscellaneous belongings. I was not in my familiar space. So, I read the news, email, and social media. And played games. My writing would wait.
Dave moved his computer downstairs and sat across from me. He laughed from time to time. I was glad. He was listening to podcasts and watching YouTube and would probably move on to reading science and technology blogs as usual. We were two peas in a pod. Yet something wasn’t right.
New carpeting shines on our staircase while Dave works at his computer in the dining room during installation, September 2022.
Dave described it best. He was the first one up in the morning as usual, and could hear my first footfall pound the floor above his head as he sat at his computer. “I don’t always want to live this close,” he confessed. I could only agree. For more than half a week, we lived each other’s day: Every breath, cough, swallow, sniff, squeak of a chair. Every cough, burp, and fart. Every laugh, sigh, and grunt. Perhaps this was a bit too intimate. And on top of all that, we sat in this cramped space while our house sounded like it was falling down around us. A different kind of weight lay between us. And it was not one easy to share. But we were committed to this temporary displacement. We knew that, by evening, we would be moving furniture together again.
Each night after the crew left, and again the next morning, we moved items either back into a room that was finished or out of a room that was next. Our reward was settling down afterward with a snack in front of the TV while we congratulated each other on getting through another day.
Soon it was the evening before the last day. We knew that in the morning we had to move the king-sized futon mattress. Dave suggested the easiest way to manage this was to move it into my office. It was almost a straight shot down the hallway. There was just a slight jog to the left at the top of the stairs. The old carpeting had been ripped up in places, exposing rough and uneven patches of padding, but it was passable. So before bed, we put furniture back into my office, leaving a large area open for the mattress.
The guest bath floor finished and tub still full o’books halfway through flooring installation, September 2022.
Finally, it was Thursday morning. I pulled the duvet, blankets, sheets, and pad off our bed. Dave dragged the mattress into position in the doorway. I grabbed the other end, and 1,2, 3! we lifted it. Dave started through the hall, walking backwards. I followed, walking forwards. As we moved, the weight shifted slightly. I adjusted my hands on the slippery fabric and we continued down the hall together.
Suddenly Dave and the mattress came at me. Dave’s foot had caught in a fold in the floor padding. I took a step back, still clutching the fabric, then quickly shifted my own footing to regain my balance. I watched as Dave struggled to free himself. Meanwhile, my fingers were slipping. I couldn’t hold on much longer. After what seemed an eternity, Dave retrieved his foot. “Okay?” he called. “Yep!” I managed as the mattress shifted away from me again. I reset my grip. He started forward quickly. I now began to fall forward. I took a deep breath, braced my feet on the floor, then pushed up on the mattress while at the same time stepping underneath it. But my forward foot found the same pucker in that durn carpet padding Dave had. I let out an involuntary “Ooph!”and I was falling forward again.
The treacherous hallway after the flooring installation was complete, September 2022.
While balancing on one foot, I worked to retrieve my other foot. Again, it felt like an eternity before I felt it come free. I leaped up over the loose padding in time to move with Dave as he navigated the turn at the stair. Now I was a pro: I shifted my hands on the mattress while my body acted as counter balance and I cleared the doorway. We then laid that mattress down securely on the office floor. We stood up, breathing heavily.
“Nice job!”
“You, too!”
Neither of us could have carried that monster alone. To do it together, we had to move in a responsive, yet synchronized way. We had something to lose and to gain. The losses were minor: a sore back, a bruised arm. The gain was luxurious carpeting and beautiful vinyl tile flooring.
Dave and me, enjoying life, September 2022.
And we now know that we still got it!