Remodeling, African Style

One of the things we asked our landlord to do when we rented the house was make a laundry area- someplace we could install a washer and dryer. He ultimately decided to put in on our side porch, and enclosed part of the porch as a laundry room with a window to the outside and a lockable door. It's a nice little porch and looks onto the sidewalk that runs down the south side of the house (and where a nice breeze is always blowing if a breeze is to be found).

It is also the closest exit from the house to the generator, and the location of our circuit breaker and the box that switches the house current from ECG to generator power, but the porch itself was closed off from the sidewalk by a short wall with a railing. What this meant was that when we needed to use the generator we either:

went out the front door
turned on the generator
walked back in the front door
went out the laundry porch door
switched the main power over

Or

we went out the front door
turned on the generator
climbed over the wall into the laundry porch
etc.

Or

(in a really back-wrenching move)
went out the laundry porch
climbed over the wall and landed awkwardly (everytime!) in the landscaping
turned on the generator
climbed back over the wall
etc.

None of these options was working for us.

So last week when I was talking to our landlord I asked if we could have steps off the laundry porch. Bless his little Lebanese heart, his reply was "Can you wait until Tuesday?"

Right on schedule Tuesday, four guys showed up and started knocking down the wall on my laundry porch and built me the nicest steps. Just like that. No building permit, no plans, no fuss. They demolished the wall, laid blocks, cemented the blocks, re-squared the wall that was left, and were finished in about three hours. Now it is drying and curing.



No more acrobatics off the porch railing, no more schlepping down the driveway and back then through the house and back. WooHoo! Am I too easy, do you think? ;-)