The Neighbour's Renovation
The owner of the house across from us wanted to renew the old front steps. Two days later three workers showed up with a van full…
The owner of the house across from us wanted to renew the old front steps. Two days later three workers showed up with a van full of tools and a container for the rubble. First they pulled up the cladding stones. Then they started breaking the concrete underneath with sledgehammers. Of the five steps, after all that hammering they had only managed to break one. Every now and then I'd feel a tremor from where I was sitting. "Is that an earthquake?" I'd wonder, then remember there's no such thing here and relax. My husband started grumbling: "Are you building a bunker against an air raid or something? What is this? It's a five-step entrance staircase. Are they planning to jump off the top? Such German thoroughness." A little later the workers gave up trying to break it by hand. The next day they brought a small tracked breaker. It hammered away all day — TAK TAK TAK — and finished off the remaining four steps. On the third day, in the morning, it broke up the platform left by the door. Then a small excavator and a portable toilet arrived. The excavator loaded the big chunks of concrete from the steps into the container. They fenced off the area around the house. Not a speck of dust escaped. Now they've started digging around the house. I think they're about to do the waterproofing.
