So Henry started and halfway through week two, we waved as a fourteen cubic yard dumpster full of construction waste was hauled away. The planning and prep work are necessary, and they take time and effort, but they’re mostly mental or informational. The real work of transformation starts with demolition. You go all the way to the foundation. You get rid of everything that is rotted. You rip out everything that wasn’t done right, and you start over because the right way matters.
For Henry, the right way means the right tools and the right materials and a commitment to quality work. It means he’s there from 8 or 9 most mornings until 7 or 8 at night. It means sending me a surprising number of text messages and calling me anytime he has a question. He has made zero assumptions about what we want. He has built and rebuilt more homes and rooms than I have been in and I’m absolutely certain he has informed opinions about everything, but he has still asked us about every detail from door texture to trim style to light switch location to the best pizza place to feed his guys. And he has taught me. Every day when I get home from work I check in with him and we talk about what’s been happening and what’s going to happen. He shows me things he did and things he found and things he fixed. We talk again before he leaves for the night. He has walked me through each step and even let me do a bit here and there.
By far, my biggest (and proudest) contribution was filling that dumpster. I ripped out and threw in more than half of those fourteen cubic yards because it’s my basement in my house and if we are doing this, I am doing this. The thing is, I wanted to do it and on some level I needed to do it. It felt good to stand there and wave as someone else’s walls and wiring drove away. At this point, the basement itself was still a dusty, chaotic mess, but it was oddly satisfying to watch all of that stuff disappear. All the compromises, all the decisions and choices made by someone else for something else, all the mysteries of what they’d built before us were in that dumpster and everything from this point on was ours. New decisions and choices, new mysteries, hopefully fewer compromises.
It’s amazing what we learned when we opened up those walls. We learned where the mice lived. We learned how shabby, shallow work had been covered up. We learned where shortcuts were taken. We learned that things could have been far more disastrous. There were unterminated electrical lines in the ceiling. There were new shims holding up rotted floor beams. There were live electrical lines stapled to the footers. The same footers that had been underwater for hours. Had just one of those poorly installed electrical lines hidden in the walls had a single staple hole through the edge or a tear in the lining during that flood, we could be telling a very different disaster story now. Doing the work matters and doing it the right way matters.
But honestly, it’s easier to not do the work of rebuilding. It would have been way easier for us to do the bare minimum and leave all the problems. It would have been faster. It would have been cheaper. And that right there is enough for most people to go with easier. Easier, like “normal,” doesn’t leave a lot of room for growth. It’s easier to say no than it is to do the work that yes requires. It’s easier to shut something down than it is to nurture meaningful change. Corporately, it’s easier to go with the lowest bid, to stick with what has always been done, or to claim procedure (or tradition) than it is to take a risk that might result in something truly innovative or transformational. On a personal level, it’s easier to shut down than face our fears. It’s easier to close our ears and eyes than it is to open our hearts. It’s easier to look away than to walk away.
Transformation isn’t easy. It’s not a halfway sort of operation. The work of true change, be it in a basement or in the heart, be it in changing a habit or perspective or the culture of a company, will never be easy. And it won’t ever come without a bit of demolition.