Actually, because this is Saint Paul, where nothing changes, we live in the suburbs of 1895--still well within current city limits, but having all the gritty urban vibe of your basic two story brick elementary school, with the swing sets and yellow school buses of your youth--which also happens to be right out our back yard.
Being urbanites, and thus the type of people who park in the street--we have parked in the street for the fifteen years* we have owned this place. And also because we haven't had a decent garage to park in. Sure, the house came with a two car garage, but we took care of that, and promptly filled it with re-useable renovation debris. "Re-useable" as in "I'll bet I could do something with that someday, if I ever got [insert unrealistic estimate of time, interest and equipment here]."
*Clearly, this must be an error. Fifteen years! I'm not old enough to have done ANYTHING for fifteen years, am I?
Then, the Nice People From The City noticed our garage. It really wasn't so bad--not much to look at, but we were just waiting for a huge branch from the towering maple trees beside it to crush it to the ground. Sadly, as attractive of a reconstruction plan as that was, it failed to execute on a timely basis. Then, the Nice Guys down the block who had a worse looking garage replaced theirs. And ours got scheduled for demolition.
Mr. Sweetie, Our Super Nice Next Door Neighbor, and I spent a weekend with crowbars, sledge hammers and intermittent assistance from the kidlets, and at the end of it all we had an impressive collection of debris packed scientifically into a dumpster and a naked view into the street behind us.
Thus, all last winter, as I scraped with snow, the sleet, the frost, the frozen rain off my car, I kept thinking "I won't have to do this next year...in Jerusalem."
Really, I am sorry my brain works like this. I can't help it. Every time I thought about next year, the words "in Jerusalem" would float unbidden into my brain. Of course, I think it's a respectful homage to my friends who liked to teach me Hebrew words, and then laughed their asses off at hearing a blonde shiksa trying to pronounce words like "L'chaim." But, just in case they feel differently, I offer a blanket apology, and swear that I mean it with all due respect.
ANYWAY--so now, we have a garage!
Most of a garage anyway. I got up one morning, and suddenly there were about a dozen men in my back yard with a cement truck, and at the end of a hour and a half, they were gone, leaving behind a beautiful cement pad and one last guy to lay the stone edging for the framing to rest on. It was amazing! They came, they poured, they levelled and then left! I have watched Mr. Sweetie do cement work around our house, and when you don't have a big mixer truck, it takes a LOT of WORK. Maybe we should get one for Mr. Sweetie's next birthday.
Then, I got a call from the garage guys, who said "We'll deliver some lumber to your house on Monday, and we will probably even get a carpenter out there sometime on Monday as well." I saw the first load of lumber--pre-built triangles for the roof. About two hours later, there were three walls standing, all framed in. Before the end of the week, we had the garage built, sheathed in plywood, the acess door and windows all installed--and all evidence of construction materials cleared away.
Then the roofers came. I have no idea how many of them there were, but they were like ants--climbing up onto the roof, roped together: one man on each end of a rope, which was laid across the peak of the roof. Men were carrying shingles in from a truck, men were hoisting shingles to the roof, men were laying shingles, and still other men were running across the shingles power hammering nails into place. Then, they were gone.
So now, we have a ginormous garage in our back yard. The garage itself isn't so big, really, but given the size of our Hip Urban Lot, it looks like a second house backed up to ours. We are still awaiting siding, wiring, and the overhead door, which will doubtless arrive and all be installed while I'm not looking. It's got several windows, so the side that faces the house looks more charming than its predecessor, storage above the parking space, and extra storage next to the cars. The neighbors already want to move in.
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