But enough about the 10,000-square-foot monster homes and the swift water taxis of Lake Como. The destructive among you will be pleased to know that the old, decrepit studio has finally started to come down. For real this time. After much hemming and great hawing, I finally busted out the decon tools and pulled down some walls.

Minutes after I got through this entire pile—a rough guess would be 413,986 nails—my wife came up and said “Why don’t you just get a de-nailing gun for that?” A de-nailing gun? “Yeah, that’s how the deconstruction teams from Resource and all the salvage yards get all the nails out. Otherwise it would take forever.” This is why I married my wife—she’s much smarter than I am.

She’s also the one who’s been nailing it into my head that I need a firmer schedule. I’ve been sort of floating along on notions of arbitrary dates and deadlines, pulling down a wall here or some insulation there—which is something you can’t really get away with in construction. For instance, I rolled out of bed the other day thinking that I was going to tear the cedar-shake roof off the studio that day, but—uh, I should probably tell the neighbors that I’m going to be shoveling shingles into their back yard this afternoon. Another example: The studio’s exterior west wall is buried about six inches into the surrounding dirt. In order to pull that wall down, I have to dig out that wall. But there’s an electric line and a gas line that are also buried there, meaning I can’t really start hacking round with a shovel—I have to call the local utility and have them come point out where my lines run so I can dig around them. “Hey dudes, can you come map my utility lines for me? Like this afternoon?” doesn’t really work with the big utility companies.

With great humor I look back on my bonehead predictions of a few short months ago—that I would have the studio torn down and a new foundation in place by this time. As if. I still haven’t pinned down what the foundation walls are going to be made of.