![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/WestWall-the-not-a-garage_050813.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWorse, the ghastly Not-A-Garage was the only functional entrance to the house. You had to go through all this to get to my kitchen door.<\/p>\n
How’s that for a grand entryway? Greetings, guests. I’d ask you to come in out of the rain, but it’s raining harder inside than out!<\/em><\/p>\n And again — look at that insane roof structure! What demented mind would even conceive of such a thing?<\/p>\n It wasn’t even useful for anything. Couldn’t park a car in it because there was only a walk-in door. Couldn’t store anything because of that little indoor-rain problem. Couldn’t use it as a laundry room because the plumbing for the washer and dryer was in the living room<\/em>. <\/p>\n Naturally, the Not-A-Garage had to go. But that was no easy task. Getting rid of it took three years.<\/p>\n First year:<\/p>\n Second year:<\/p>\n Although most of the structure was gone, it was impossible to get rid of it all because of the insane ways it had been grafted onto the roof. Roofs, plural. Making it go away would involve not only re-roofing, but re-designing rooflines. Oh, the nights I spent lying awake trying to figure out how to do that. Oh, the days I looked at that hideousness and wondered if it could even be done.<\/p>\n (And yes, in the above photo I appear to be living like the sort of person who is the product of generations of first-cousin matings. At times I felt like that, too. I’m increasingly convinced that the people who built the house fit that description. Maybe they even married their sisters.)<\/p>\n It didn’t look any better close up, but at least I finally got rid of the old water heater beside my oh-so-welcoming door.<\/p>\n For many years my home has been the gem of the neighborhood:<\/p>\n But … progress. I figured out how to re-shape the roof and some people smarter than I figured out how to translate my sketches into a structure that wouldn’t fall down on us.<\/p>\n Even after the not-a-garage was gone and the roof re-shaped, the west wall (the wall about which this entire saga is actually being written) was still a mess, though. It felt like it was going to be awful forever.<\/p>\n Naturally, when we (the Wandering Monk and I in one of the first jobs he did for me) ripped off the remaining bits, we found rot in the west wall. It was manageable, but for a year after that I lived with a patchwork wall covered in the Dreaded Tarpaper. Even as we began the final work this May, the west wall continued — and continued to continue — to look like hell.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n