Amazing Strength and Endurance

Here we are, married 54 years, young in spirit, still in good physical shape. We've lived in our current home almost twenty years. And during that space of time this house has undergone an amazing array of transformative alterations. Originally a fairly open-concept home, it no longer is. A formation of glass doors form walls interrupting the open flow. Tall windows have been festooned with layers of stained glass designs, colouring and lighting our interior no matter the time of day or appearance of the sun.

Our kitchen, laundry room, powder room, upstairs bathrooms have all had complete makeovers. The basement level was long ago transformed to four discrete portions; a study and powder room, a long and large recreation room, a workshop and a utility-furnace room. One of the upstairs bedrooms, overlooking the foyer, was transformed to a library, painstakingly lined with West Coast lodge-pole pine, shelving for our groaning collection of books along the two long walls; niches for computer and television.

The long, broad curving staircase altered, with the carpeting removed to be replaced by oak treads and backs.

The rooms that had been broadloomed changed to hardwood flooring, the carpeting ripped off to allow for cherry in the dining room, an exotic dark butternut in the upstairs hallways, in the master bedroom and the library. The exterior of the house saw a giant exercise in excavation and the creation of stonework and pavers to enhance the long walkway from driveway to front door, and the two little piazzas with fancy brickwork where our gardens are shown to perfection.

All this and more accomplished by the clever mind and hands of one solitary workman. From the marble lining the walls of the bathrooms and the floors, to the ceramic tile throughout the kitchen, and breakfast room and lining those walls as well, the work was conducted, inclusive of electrical and plumbing, by my husband. In the process of which, we somehow managed to accumulate an astounding amount of detritus.

Some of which was discarded as the separate jobs were completed, and some of which was not. We have what seems like tons of tiny bits of coloured glass, waste from the many large windows that decorate this house. And from the countless woodworking jobs, there are bits and pieces of wood left over, stacked and appealing for discard. And so much detritus brought with us when we moved belonging to our three children, articles they now consider waste.

The excavated dirt from the work done in the front gardens had been deposited under the deck in our backyard. That very deck that a few weeks earlier had been taken apart, to be replaced, and once replaced by my husband with an entirely new deck, the conundrum of what to do with all this new waste faced us. Solution: rental of a huge dumpster from a company that specializes in waste management and recycling.

It has stood in our driveway for three days now. And the vast accumulation of leftover building materials and that soil deposited under the new deck is beginning to fill up that dumpster. Hard, back-breaking work that hardly seems to faze my husband, a man of 72 years, energized by the need to commit ourselves to some order in a creative but somewhat disorderly life.