Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved (25 page)

*
I DO CONTEMPLATE
my role in deforestation of the planet as I watch the men laying down the decking. I wonder if the conservation effort of moving a cottage cancels out my ecologically incorrect choice of mahogany or whether the reverse is true. If I am not entirely comfortable with my choice from an environmental point of view, I am certain that I have made the correct aesthetic choice. The mahogany looks exactly right next to the red cedar.

Today is my birthday. I’ve given myself the day off, and am happy to observe the progress of what feels like the perfect birthday present. I realize as I think about my choice—my expensive choice—that I might have settled for white cedar if I’d made the decision a few months ago. But all grown up or not, I still feel a sense of entitlement when my birthday rolls around. I allow myself small luxuries in early October every year. I treat myself in some way or another on my self-declared day off. If the weather is good, I take a long walk on the beach, letting the gratitude for another year, the pleasure of Cape Cod, the sheer luckiness of my life mingle with the slight melancholy that birthdays carry. This year, my luxury, my treat, is not small. It is this gorgeous deck of hard red wood, silver nails glinting as the sun moves around the house. I dread the bill that will come at the end of this month, but today I almost let myself believe it is a gift.

I watch the men moving quickly, efficiently. John and Eric hammering down the decking, Ed at the saw, Peter ferrying the planks to John. They are using stainless steel nails, a must with mahogany, John tells me—a little pricey, but otherwise rust can leach into the wood. The planks are butted up tight against each other, no space between them. John and I made that decision earlier this week. “It will feel more like a room, almost like a wood floor,” John said. “The disadvantage is that you’ll have to shovel it if we get a really heavy snow, and you may get puddles in the rain.”

We’d purposely matched the deck to the floor level of the house, rather than the cottage. Step out the double doors, and you need not step down. I want the deck to feel like an extension of the kitchen. He told me the planks will shrink a bit over time anyway—less shoveling. In the same conversation we resolved the problem that the pressure-treated underbeams present.

“I don’t want to see them,” I said to John.

“We can dress ’em with cedar.” To dress, in this case, means to cover the offending beams with a cedar board. Another handy construction term for my growing glossary. He showed me how it would look, holding up a plank. Perfect. Nothing like a well-dressed deck.*

*
AT THE END OF EACH DAY,
the men gather around John’s truck to review the day’s progress over a beer. I observe this ritual, and am intrigued that much of the conversation is about their work; it strikes me how happy they seem to talk about what they have accomplished, to consider what they will do tomorrow or the next day they’ll be on the job. Sometimes the conversation drifts to the station house, or to a recent softball game, but mostly they speak of what they have accomplished today, and what they will do tomorrow. For this reason, I am not entirely excluded from the end-of-day gathering, though I do try to give them their privacy. Still, when I am invited to stand around the back of John’s truck, I feel as though I have been admitted to a very special club. I am not a beer drinker, but I drink in their conversation, their humor. We laugh and chat and then as soon as they have each finished one beer, they are on their way.

I invite the men to have their end-of-the-day beer today on the first section of decking they have laid, and they accept the invitation. After all, it is my birthday. Eric toasts me and jokes that tonight, when my friends arrive, I can have my first legal drink on my brand-new deck. He’s been teasing me all day about my age, trying perhaps to guess it, but I do not reveal that I am exactly twice the legal drinking age. Instead I tell the story of being carded, just this summer, in a Chinese restaurant. I hadn’t a clue what the waiter wanted as he kept saying, “ID? ID?” When I finally produced my driver’s license, I tell them, the waiter squinted to make sure he was reading the date correctly. Then he handed it back to me as if it were made of hazardous materials. “So sorry, so sorry!” he said. No problem, I wanted to assure him. You made my day, my week, my year. But before I could say a word, he had rushed off to the bar to get the glass of white wine he’d almost refused me.

The guys laugh and nurse their drinks. We admire the view, their excellent work, and the conversation turns back to the project. Tomorrow, the kitchen wall comes down, John reminds me. I’ll have to clear out the cabinet tonight, be prepared to move the fax machine, relocate the phone. John outlines the plan for tomorrow; he and Peter will pick up lumber in the morning—cedar for the dressing, and the giant beam we’ll need to hold up the ceiling once we open up the wall. Ed and Howard will start early in the kitchen, taking out the window, exposing the studs. Everyone else will be on the deck until it’s time to put the new beam in place. I’m thrilled to be working from home again tomorrow; it sounds like another action-packed day. We appreciate the deck in silence for a few more minutes as the conversation winds down. The sun sinks low in the western sky; the beers are finished, and we are done for the day.

TODAY, THE LAST WALL
between the houses will fall. Already the kitchen window is gone, and the spice rack that Harry and Tony built me a few years ago is on its way out. Next, the kitchen cabinet I unloaded last night; then, piece by piece, the wall. John and Ed had an extended discussion this morning about how to hold up the ceiling before the new “header” is in place. I followed most of it. Essentially we need to keep the house standing while almost fourteen feet of structural wall comes down. “Lolly columns,” Ed says, and pleased, I add another word to the magical new language I am learning. It seems we will have pillars in the kitchen and a temporary suspension system between roof and ceiling. I don’t fully understand how it will all work, but I decide to just wait and see. John and Ed seem tense this morning; we are all a little nervous about this important opening. I do my best imitation of an affirmative, manly grunt when John asks me if I am okay with the plan. I have learned this year that there are times to ask detailed questions and times to grunt; it’s clear to me this is a grunting moment.

Ed and Howard are working indoors, one on either side of the diminishing kitchen wall. “Easier on the old guys,” John says jokingly about his dad’s indoor location, but in truth this is the tougher project today. Paulie, John, Peter, and Eric are at work on the walkaround section of the deck, while Ed and Howard mastermind the “demo.” It is apparent to me that Howard enjoys demolition, smiling in at me from the hallway as he saws through a section of wall and unveils another stretch of studs. I don’t know how they feel about me staring at them like this, taking the occasional photograph, but Ed and Howard are patient, jovial souls. Even if they wish I were elsewhere, they put up with me. Still, midmorning, when I have to run out for a haircut, I suspect they are not sad to see me disappear for an hour. “Will I make it back in time to see the beam go in?” I ask, and they assure me I will see it. I dare not ask them to delay on my account, but it is exactly what I hope they might do if I run late.

I take another look at the beam on my way out. It is stretched across the bench on the deck. It’s a huge, gargantuan thing, six inches deep and ten inches high, made of composite lumber, scraps of wood all glued together. “It’s stronger that way,” Peter assures me, sensing I might be worried. It does look strong, though it isn’t very attractive, this glued-together wood. But in its heft, the beam is beautiful to me. It makes me feel safe, secure, certain that my roof will stay up. I want everyone to see it. I imagine visitors marveling at the span and scope of such a structural member, and for a moment consider leaving it exposed. But the impulse leaves me as I imagine it hanging, its dark patchworked nakedness imposing in the kitchen. Touching the beam, I pause for a moment, and say a little prayer of thanks to all the trees mixed up inside that timber. I step down the untrimmed stairs, marveling at the miracle of the emerging deck, and I am on my way.

When I come back, I enter through the front door, sensing commotion in the hallway. My hair is shorter and redder than it was when I left, but no one mentions it. They are too busy struggling with the header. As I enter the kitchen, I take in the lolly columns: poles with boards atop them and cloths atop the boards to protect the ceiling. They are stationed in front of the sink, and the men are in the hallway. I have arrived just as they are hauling the beam from the deck to the kitchen. It takes four of them to lift it—Ed, Howard, John, and Paulie. They maneuver it carefully through the doors, executing a sideways turn into the hallway.

“Okay,” John says. “Now.” Their movement is synchronized, a slow-motion choreography of forward march, stretch, and lift. They push the timber up, up into place. Their faces are red with effort. I think about heart attacks happening when men have their hands over their heads, and push that thought away. Have to get this on film. I snap a photo; they lift, maneuver, lift and hold. In the glare of the flash, we all realize: It doesn’t fit.

“Too long,” John says. The words come out in an exhalation.

“No,” says Ed, patient. “It fits. We just need to get it into place.”

“Too long,” John repeats. He is sounding exasperated. “Who measured it?” He knows his father and Howard did.

“Who cut it?” asks Ed in turn, smiling at me. From his grin, I know that his son was at the saw.

“Let’s take it down and take a half-inch off of it,” says John. But no one moves.

“It will fit,” says Ed.

“Here’s the problem,” says Paulie, who is at one end. “There’s a tiny jog right here, about halfway up. If we can just get past this, it will go right into place.”

“Cut off half an inch,” says John; his voice is starting to strain. His face is at least as red as his father’s now.

“A half-inch!” says Ed. Clearly this strikes him as a dramatic measure; yet he is yielding on the issue of shoving the beam into place.

“Paulie,” John says, “can we angle around that jog or is this beam too long?”

“Too long,” Paulie says.

“Thank
you,
” says John. In silence, the four men ease the beam down, angle it out the doorway.

“You’d never make it as a framer,” John says to Ed after they have deposited their load back onto the bench.

“But it’s wide by maybe an eighth of an inch, tops. A half—”

“A half will make sure we can get it the hell up there this time. This is rough carpentry. It isn’t a problem.”

Ed shrugs and John has his way. But I can see the tiny, invisible gap bothers Ed. If he had his druthers, he would eliminate the one-sixteenth inch of wall that is in the way, and then lift the perfectly measured, accurately cut beam into place. John’s right; that half-inch will not matter, not in practice. But in principle, Ed’s old-world carpentry ethics have been compromised.

They are in the kitchen again, and the tension is palpable as they lift the beam into place for the second time. It glides right into position. John smiles. Quickly, they begin securing the beam. I snap photos in time with the nail gun. In minutes, the beam is holding the weight of the roof, the ceiling, the house. The men are standing, looking up at their work. They are silent. Then Peter walks in. “Hey, that looks great,” he says, his comment as easy as a sunny day. He is oblivious to the drama.

“Go back outside if you know what’s good for you,” Paulie warns. “It’s thick in here.”

Peter shrugs, “Really opens up the kitchen,” he says to no one in particular as he goes back out the double doors.

Paulie smiles first. Then Ed. Finally, John, looking right at his Dad. Howard grins too, the newest guy on the crew taking his cue from the others.

“I love it,” I say.

“But who was right?” Ed asks. “Did it fit? Or not?” He knows I had the best vantage point.

“Paulie was right,” I say. “There was a tiny jog. If you could have gotten past it, the beam would have fit, so you were right. But John was right to make a second cut, because you’d have had to tear up the wall otherwise. So you are both right. You’re a good team.”

John rolls his eyes at my obvious, though truthful, diplomacy. But Ed soaks it in: “We are a good team, aren’t we?” He winks at me as John slides past him, moving outdoors where the air is cooler and where a sixteenth of an inch carries much less significance.*

*
STAN THE ELECTRICIAN
shows up in the afternoon to work on some wiring. He’s impressed with the new look of the kitchen. “Great view,” he says to me. “What a difference.”

Neither Ed nor Howard volunteers any information about the events of the morning, and I follow their lead. “I love it,” I say for the second time in a day.

I met Stan about twelve years ago as a young homeowner in need of a new furnace. He came to hook up the thermostat. He looks a lot like Neptune, with longish blond hair and an even longer blond beard. The Neptune image is only reinforced by his surfing habit. I haven’t seen him emerge from the sea, but I can imagine it without difficulty, surfboard as triton, wet suit as godly regalia. He lived in California for a long time, and that shows in the aviator sunglasses he wears and the laid-back approach he takes to life and work. It isn’t that he doesn’t work hard, or that he doesn’t do an excellent job. He’s just hard to track down sometimes, and it’s hard to pin him down once you reach him. Getting him over to estimate the project took several phone calls. But when he’s on the job, Stan is smart, capable, and an excellent problem solver. Just what we need for this quirky little project.

With his West Coast roots and his golden Santa beard, Stan isn’t exactly one of the guys. On the first day, he was working outside with his ladder set up by the electrical connection to the main house. He hauled a wooden box onto a plank below him that became his base of operations. When he opened up the box, there was a stereo inside, tuned to the local all-folk station. I wondered how this would go over with John’s crew, who were working on the skeleton of the deck. I’ve learned something of their musical tastes. Peter prefers easy listening while he is working. John and Eric listen to the rock station when Peter isn’t on the job. Ed requires no music at all, while Howard is a whistler who plays whatever comes to mind.