6/11/11

Construction Post

Last Tuesday, I told you how the day laborer next door butchered the tree on this property and how all shade is gone, so the west side of this house is hotter than hades from noon till night. Well, the construction has continued on the houses and yard since then. This morning, a Saturday, I was awoken by pounding and drilling at 6:30 a.m. Since I still have the hacking cough, which gets worse at night, I didn't fall asleep till 2 a.m.! So to be awoken that early really annoyed me.

Luckily, most cities have rules about when construction can start, so I called the police. Turns out that on weekends, construction noise can't start till 9 a.m. on weekends, so the officers must have come by because shortly after my call, the noise stopped. Yay! I fell back to sleep till about 10:30 a.m. when the pounding began again. Thank goodness, I really needed that sleep.

The houses and yard next door should look nice once they're done, I just wish they weren't so brutish and so noisy. Having torn down, rebuilt or refurbished 6 houses* in LA since 1983, I realize construction noise is a necessary pain in the neck. However, on my projects the workers knew they had to plan on doing "quiet" work till 10 am. Then they could pound and saw all they wanted. Maybe that's why I'm sensitive to workers who show no regard for local ordinances or courtesy to neighbors.

It would seem that I'm in a rather negative space of late. People are ruder and pushier than they used to be. Personally I blame this on the current economy and depression. So much money was lost by men running major institutions, men with no ethics or conscience. What's amazing is that none of them ever paid for the cavalier destruction of the economy and many peoples lives. It's the average citizen who suffers because of their negligence. Oh dear, I'm going off on a soap box here aren't I?

I'm going to have to work on myself and get in a more positive frame of mind. After all, I can't change what's happened and would have little effect on the men running these companies who are now receiving massive salaries and bonuses, carte blanche! Obviously I'm having a little trouble getting off my soap box or turning my mood around. Sorry. I think I need to cook something. It'll probably be my Chicken Pot Pie or Danish/Caldo Verde.

*Note:  Any houses I tore down were of no architectural value or beauty. The beautiful Mediterranean style homes from the 1920's were all treated as treasures and only returned to their original beauty after having been bastardized by former owners. The tear-downs were rebuilt to be period pieces based on historical data and informed by other architecture in the neighborhoods.

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