Hubbub at House of Horne

Early this morning alley workers arrived to rework some sections of the concrete behind our house which apparently were not soundly constructed during the Alley Rebuild of 2007-2008. They originally showed up this past Saturday, during the Bridal Shower of 2008 (more on that another time) and began the loud and smelly work of cutting through cement whilst 27 fashionably dressed women drinking champagne punch watched them with interest through the windows along the back of our house.  The Bride-to-be of course appreciated the extra drama and excitement which this added to her special day. Thankfully she is my sister, and quite used to the antics and craziness which is life around here!

The timing wasn’t supposed to work out like this, but then you don’t get to plan these things. Three weeks ago we drew up a contract for a fence rebuild around our backyard. Our charming picket, while lovely to look at:

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is pushing the 25 year old mark, and Jay has resorted to holding it together with rubberbands and scotchtape. So, it was time to say goodbye.

Today while the rather moody city workers laid rebar in preparation for pouring cement, who should arrive but our wonderful fence folks for their first day of work, and of course they needed to be in the same exact spot as the alley laborers. And the alley men were none too happy about it. I got grumped at by the foreman (who by the way had assured me on Saturday afternoon during the bridal shower, that all the pouring of cement would be completely finished on Monday and our fence guys could be back there working with no problems by the end of this week) who told me I’d best hold off on constructing my fence (but sir, we already had, they were supposed to begin construction on Monday, remember, but you told me not to?) or else. Huh. I told the fence workers I was sorry for the trouble, especially after I’d already asked them to postpone their work earlier in the week.

Regardless, the fence teardown commenced in the midst of the alley work and no one threw any punches (or bits of picket fence) that I could see. Heheh.  About an hour later, our sprinkler service showed up to repair a line we unfortunately nicked while sodding part of the back yard a few weeks ago. They turned on the various sprinkler zones to verify the source of the leak, and promptly gave the fence workers a bit of a bath, which maybe they appreciated – it is almost 90 degrees out! Even so, I found myself apologizing yet again to the guys from Zarate Fence, as I feel they will be more than tired of this job before it’s even begun at this rate.

But as I write this, things are calming down.  The alley workers are almost done with the cement behind our yard, and have moved just next door, and are making noise and such behind our neighbor’s house now, so the area is clear for fence work. The sprinkler dudes have repaired the nicked line and also informed me that our pipes are not really dug deep enough for sodding/planting purposes, so we’d best be careful when doing any future landscaping. Brilliant, but I regress.

Work continues on the fence, and in another week’s time, if all goes as planned (hah!) maybe we’ll have pictures of a brand spankin’ new fence to share with you. For now, I leave you with an early picture of the teardown:

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