The Once and Future Wall

If it's true that good fences make good neighbors, it must be doubly true that good walls make good marriages, particularly when one member of the couple is an up-and-coming tycoon with responsibilities to his media universe, and the other is a piano teacher. I mostly disagree with Ogden Nash's statement that "When it comes to beginners' music I am not enthusic," but I can attest to his observation, "Have you noticed about little fingers? When they hit a sour note, they lingers."

Readers of my Isolation Log, from the early days of the pandemic, will recall that I run my empire from an Emergency Command and Control Vehicle on the grounds of Tycoon Towers (formerly known as Cottage Cheese.) Sadly, the air conditioner in the ECCV has started making an acrid smell, and I have relieved it of its job, which it never did with gusto anyway. But the thing is, the ECCV is a unique point in the universe, a zone of special physics where the conservation of energy does not apply. Not only does the ECCV convert solar energy to heat with 130% efficiency, it creates three joules of heating de novo, for every joule of sunlight. And so the time has come to move my enterprise indoors.

Some previous owner of our home spent a great deal of time and money adding beams and removing walls, creating a nice, airy, open floor plan. Starting this weekend, Mrs. Tycoon and I will spend our own time and money ruining that well-conceived improvement. Come along with me for the first installment of Home Wreckers, the Casual-Observer's cautionary guide to DIY.

Episode 1, Demolition Man.

When we moved into the house, the previous owner had walled up the main closet to accommodate a gargantuan TV, leaving just a funny little 2' by 2' hole at the bottom for their gaming consoles. After about a year of living with that, I decided I wanted a closet more than I wanted the world's smallest crawl-in panic room, and so I busted my way back in. I suppose that counts as demolition work, but really it was just a click of the undo button, erasing a dumb thing some fool had brought upon himself when he bought an 80-inch screen on sale at Costco, and his wife pointed out he had nowhere to put it. Today, minutes after I write these words, I will commit my first real act of demolition, attacking the sheet rock around a perfectly good beam, with the aim of inserting studs and re-creating a wall that was removed long ago. For my final trick, I'll put together the Murphy bed kit that showed up yesterday. Then I'll have an office, and you'll have a guest room ready for you when you come visit us. (Not all at the same time. The bed instructions specify a weight limit.)

But Tom, you'll be saying, what business do you have building a wall? You can't make a sandwich that holds together. I reply that, first of all, sandwiches thrive on optimism. The best sandwiches are made with a pile of unstable ingredients bound together by faith. And as to your other point, you're right. I'm not Wall-e. I'm not Wallmart. I'm not, uh, Mark Wallberg. Or Wallter Cronkite. I'm not a wall-guy. There's a fair chance this wall will come out looking like a narwhal skin stapled to a fun house mirror. But, look, we're not messing with the load structure. We're not touching the electricals (much). The work we're doing is all reversable. The biggest danger here, aside from impaling myself on a wallboard saw, is that some future owner of the house will decide they don't like the wall, and will pay an engineer ten thousand dollars to draw a beam where the wall is, and then wait nine months for a construction crew to come knock the wall down, just to realize the beam is already there, as the sad homeowner would have known if they'd simply done the sensible thing and set upon the wall with a sledge hammer, the moment inspiration struck. But that's their problem. Mine is a lack of wall where I want one, and a burning desire to smash things.

Wish us luck!