Today is the Day of the Dead, but for us it’s more like the Day of Paying Contractors a Lot of Money. We have a crew cleaning up years of leaves, sticks and detritus in the areas in front of our house, and another crew inside the house de-pesting and cleaning out the attic, then installing new attic insulation. We’re doing our part to support the local economy. 🙁
The outdoor work is something I’ve put off for years – it’s a ton of work, literally tons of dry flammable material on the ground. Given what’s happening with the climate, it makes sense to get all that flammable material off the property. We still have lots of trees, but at least now the ground won’t burn. The indoor work is similar deferred maintenance. On a 40+ year old house, the attic is nasty dirty, and the insulation has collapsed and rotted. This is the kind of thing that we’ll have to do if we ever sell the place, so might as well get it done now. Fight the good fight against entropy. Though expensive, it *does* feel good to reverse years of neglect.
As with anything I’ve tried to hire out the last couple of years, scheduling is the big problem. You agree on a schedule for the work and the contractors immediately screw things up. Miscommunication among the contractors, sometimes unreliable workers, whatever the cause, its a universal problem in today’s “service economy”. The attic work we’re having done was all scheduled to be done in one day, but it’s turning out to be three separate days in which we’re inconvenienced by having trucks in the driveway and workers roaming the house. If I were commuting and working full time, it would be a nightmare. But at the moment it’s just irritating.
Tomorrow will be a break from overseeing the work, in which a round of golf, a UK basketball game and then election night binge-watching is all on the agenda.
Last night I discovered a wonderful new Paramount+ series, A Course Called Ireland, featuring Bill Murray traveling around Ireland playing golf and interacting with the locals. After only two episodes I love it, and they’ve shown some of the same sights we saw in person. Murray has better weather than we did, which wasn’t difficult. Also, Murray and team stayed in the same B&B as us in Dingle – that was fun to see. Good stuff, and makes me want to go back and try the country again. This time with golf cubs and better weather.
Pictures from the outdoor work – small section of a much larger area. Before.
And after. Nice and clean.
