At least it's not a cold whine

The workers arrived yesterday to erect scaffolding in front of our building. It's finally happening. We've spent months chasing masonry contractors around for estimates and in October, we hammered out a deal with one of them. Then we heard nothing. When it turned brutally cold this week, I thought "Construction time is over, they'll probably come in the spring."

Wrong.

No, we're going to remove that-which-keeps-your-homes-protected-from-the-elements and then we're going to leave it that way for weeks before we get around to putting it back up.

See, here's the deal, the stone facade must be dissassembled, and then later, reassembled. Oh and did I mention that we could have a brand new car for the price of essentially breaking down a wall and re-erecting it with the same materials. In fact, it costs extra to use the same materials. (?!)

Thankfully, we will be gone during the holidays but I fear for our tenants. Tenants? Oh yeah, we own the bank owns the triplex we live in and the two apartments above us are rented. It's a great deal except when you have to alter your retirement planning to tear down a wall and rebuild it.

I'm not telling you how much we're paying, but I will say that one of our estimates was (gasp) forty-eight thousand dollars. Oh how I laughed when we received that one. The kind of laugh that leads one to the kitchen to play with the big knives.

And just because, here's a picture of our next door neighbor's house. Although you can't see it, the Christmas dog moves and carols are emanating from hidden speakers. I feel the urge to ridicule but that's not very charitable, is it?