I haven’t mentioned before, but really have been meaning to do so, what’s going on next door to us at 231. It had been an empty shell ever since we moved in, but now finally there’s work being done on it. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they’re bumping it back pretty far and, even worse, adding a third story.

First there was the weekend where guys came to clear out every shred of the place. I had thought it was a shell before, but then they took out the flooring, boards and joists and all. They set up a wide board as a ramp from the back door to a roll-off dumpster in the back yard, and they carted wheelbarrows full of debris to the dumpster. I thought about nabbing a few floor boards later that night. But finally I decided that it would be stealing, even if I thought that they considered it trash. Maybe they were going to sell it to a reclaimer of someone, I guess was my thinking.

Since then it’s been kinda exciting to watch the construction, even though I’m dreading the final product. Or, more precisely, it’s been exciting to see the results of any particular day’s construction when we get home from work. Like what had been some sort of footprint of a previous extension in the back, more recently just ditches to hold mosquito-breeding pools of water, they filled those in with cement for the new foundation. Then they put concrete block on top of that. Then they built the series of floor joists over that. Then they framed the first floor.