You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs

You don’t know dust until you’ve lived in the renovation of a several hundred year old house. I write “live in” because as we renovate, we are living in the house we are renovating. There is no “hotel stay” or “we’re staying at my/his parent’s place” while the transformation happens. No - we’re IN the renovation and this is what that looks like:

Plaster and boards and hay and seeds and 100 year old cow dung dust by the wheelbarrow full crashing to the floor as we break the ceiling.

This is the plan, though, as it will allow us - and by us, I mean, as always, my husband - to sand and seal the now exposed beams, to insulate, and to install electric and then drywall. My son and I will follow with two coats of paint.

The demolition part of this project is neither new nor surprising to us. We already replaced the ceiling in another part of the house before we moved in. The big difference was the fact that we did not live here yet. There was as much dust, but there wasn’t any furniture or any appliances to protect and we got to go home to our clean little apartment to eat and sleep at night.

During these renovations, we all wear masks and gloves and closed-toed shoes. My husband wears goggles as he’s the one cutting the ceiling. We wear crappy clothes because they get ridiculously dirty. We have great systems set up for getting all that falls into buckets and then lowered with cords to the trailer waiting below the balcony where they get emptied and then raised back up. With my stepson here, we are four and make a very efficient team. The guys at the dump know us well now.

But it is the dust which I will remember most when all of this is done. The dust gets everywhere so you quickly have to learn to live with it. We’ve put up layers of plastic barriers to try to keep the dust from spreading but dust is like a gas and it permeates everything and goes everywhere. At the end of each day of demolition, we sweep, thoroughly. Then, 20 minutes later as most dust has settled, we sweep again as if we never swept the last time or the time before that or the time before that. It makes me feel like trying to sweep the sand from a beach.

All of our meals are cooked on the plancha or come directly out of the fridge - salads, fruit, cheese, yoghurt.

In the evening, I take a well needed and even more appreciated shower. When I go to brush my teeth, I realize the black sink is grey with a layer of dust. Coming back out into the hallway, I see my footsteps traced in the dust in the floor, dust which I hadn’t noticed on my way into the bathroom.

At night, we pull back the bed covers and a cloud of dust rises off of them - even though two doors separate the bedroom from the room where we’re removing the ceiling.

I sigh as the dust settles around us and my husband reminds me, on ne fait pas d’omelettes sans casser des œufs. I know he’s right. We’ve been down this road before and ended with beautiful exposed beams in an insulated ceiling. This will be the same once the dust settles for good.