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Brendan hoists the old toilet up and heads toward the front door. “Gonna help or just stand there?”
“Supervising.” I grin, but beat him to the door and hold it open for him.
He grunts and tosses the toilet into a dumpster we had delivered this morning. “Why don’t you supervise your ass into helping?”
“I wouldn’t want to mess up your system.”
“Yeah,” he rubs his forehead with the hem of his shirt, “how long you wanna go without a shitter?”
Glancing back into our torn apart place, I cringe. “What do you need help with?”
“Help grab that vanity. Then we gotta get that tub outta here.”
I find a pair of work gloves, pull them on, then meet him in the old bathroom. He’s already demoed one wall and the door. All the outdated fixtures are gone, and the flooring has been pulled up, leaving only the plywood subfloor.
Turning in a circle, I raise my eyebrows. “I didn’t think this through too well, did I?”
He grabs hold of one side of the vanity and hoists it up. “Nope.”
Still looking around, I come to the other side of the vanity. “How long did you estimate it’d take to finish this?”
Heaving his side higher in the air, he starts moving. “I didn’t.”
After a few grunts, curses, and banging my knuckles on the door, we get the bulky thing outside and in the dumpster. I glance back at the house, take my gloves off, and scratch the top of my head. “So, how long do you think it’ll take to finish the bathrooms at least?” I can live without a finished closet for now. But a toilet?
“Well,” he slaps me on the back, getting dust and I don’t want to know what, all over my shirt, then heads inside, “the sooner we get the demo all done, the sooner I’ll know.”
I follow after him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Grabbing a crowbar, he starts ripping the mint-green tiles off the shower wall. “You never know what you’ll find with these old houses. I didn’t find any asbestos in the walls, so that’s a plus. But I gotta get this all ripped out to see just how much plumbing work we’re gonna need.”
“You got any type of timeline?”
He tosses a broken tile in the tub and turns toward me. “Best case scenario, I can have the bathrooms functioning in a week. They won’t be finished, and it’ll take longer to get the closets and office done.”
“So, two weeks total?”
He laughs and throws another chunk in the tub. “I start my new job here next week. I can probably get the drywall up and sanded in less than two weeks, so we can clean up and start unpacking. But it ain’t gonna be finished in two weeks.” He shakes his head, muttering a few curses under his breath as he goes back to prying tiles from the wall.
“I’m going to go rent a porta potty.” Sighing, I head through the plastic sheeting to the kitchen and grab my phone.
The neighbors are going to hate us. It looks bad enough with that dumpster sitting out front in our driveway. Hopefully, this renovation goes faster than what Brendan is expecting.
After making a few calls and scheduling a portable toilet to be delivered in a couple hours, I head back to the construction zone to help demo. By the time the obnoxious, bright-green box arrives, we’ve cleared out the bathroom and have the space down to studs.
“I don't know how you do this every day.” I roll my shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Ken Doll?” He laughs as he stomps around on the plywood, looking at something on the floor. “Don’t know what manual labor is?”
“No. And I’d like to keep it that way.” Grabbing Brendan’s shop-vac, I start sweeping up as much dust and debris as I can until my stomach starts growling over the thing. “Hey, Brendan, you about ready for dinner?”
Dropping the two-by-fours in his hand, he smiles over at me. “Been ready for the last three hours.”
“What are you thinking?”
He glances around the still dusty space. “Nothing in here. Wanna eat out?”
I look down at my dirty clothes. I’m not eating out like this. And I don’t really feel like army douching it in the kitchen sink right now. “What if I grilled?”
