Chapter 17

I had to leave work early so I could welcome the guy from the construction company I'd found online. I prepared myself to face the doomsday news.

"Did you have the house inspected before you bought it?"

I didn't like the man's attitude at all. He looked at me as if I were a complete dunce.

"Yes, I did. The inspection didn't reveal any profound problems, and what they did find was deducted from the final price."

He crouched and used a pocket knife to scrape at something under the facade. Then he walked a few steps along the wall and crouched again. This time when he dug with the knife, a handful of dry splinters fell to the ground.

"It looks like moisture damage. There's old Styrofoam under this part, from way back, probably the eighties. If the wood is damp, Styrofoam locks the moisture inside. The outer beams can be rotten."

"But those are the load-bearing beams." I was getting nauseous. The damned cottage would collapse onto my head after all.

"Well, yeah." The guy frowned and scratched his nose. He continued along the wall and dug with his knife here and there.

"What do I do?" I asked, trying to keep my voice level.

"Dunno. Depends on how much you have in your account." Smirking, he looked me up and down as if he could read the answer from my jeans and jacket.

I gritted my teeth and counted to five in my head so I wouldn't snap at him. "What's best for the house?"

"I can't tell you the extent of the damage unless we strip the facade."

"Let's say there is extensive damage to the support beams. Can that even be repaired?"

"Sure. You need to strip the facade and get rid of the Styrofoam and whatever old insulation is underneath that. Then you support the wall, lift it a few millimeters, and replace each beam piece by piece. Then new insulation and a new facade."

Deep breath. "How much will that cost me?"

He must have noticed my stress because his tone had lost its previous arrogance.

"That's hard to say. You can find someone who'd wrap a house like this for a quarter of a million. You can do it wall by wall to distribute the cost over several years, but then you overpay in the end. Changing the beams will cost extra, though, depending on how bad the damage is."

Two hundred and fifty thousand Swedish krona. For starters.

Fuck me.

"If I don't do anything, what happens?"

"Nothing good, that's for sure. There can be anything under that. If you're lucky, it's old moisture damage that has dried out and isn't spreading. I mean, what I'm finding is dry as dust, so that's good. But if it's still damp inside or if there's a leak somewhere, if you leave it, you might as well tear it down and build a new house."

There it was. Doomsday.

"Do you do these types of reconstructions?"

"Sure. I can call our sales guy and give you an estimate, but it won't be accurate. Not until we know what we're up against."

Could he give me any solid advice? Wasn't that his job?

"How about this? I'm going to remove a part of the facade where most of the debris is falling out. Then I'll call you again, and you can give me a more specific estimate. Is that possible?"

He shrugged. "Probably. But then I have to drive up here again."

Lord, he was infuriating.

"You can charge me for the trip."

In the grand scheme of things, that would be pocket change.

When the man was gone,I sat on my stairs and gazed over the village.

A quarter of a million plus whatever the beams would cost to replace. I could be looking at a bill of three or four hundred thousand krona. I had forty thousand in my savings account for emergencies and owed one million to the bank. I only did some quick math in my head, but if I ate nothing but beans and potatoes for the upcoming five years and didn't need any other repairs, I could save that two hundred and fifty from my current salary. The bank wouldn't give me another loan, and I wasn't stupid enough to borrow privately and face five times higher interest rates.

Could I do everything myself?

Feeling foolish, I searched a few YouTube videos. I had no idea what I was even looking at. Renting and building scaffolding. A trailer to dump the debris. The first layer of insulation, air gap, weather-resistive barrier, mineral insulation, vapor retarder…

The screen blurred. I rubbed my hand down my face and shot up.

Walking around the house, I banged at the old, red-painted planks where I could reach. Splinters and dust fell from underneath, billowing over the lawn.

"Fuck this!"

I marched to the shed and took an axe. I chopped one plank loose, then another. Grunting, I pried it off. White Styrofoam sat beneath it.

Might as well.

I swung the axe and chopped that off too.

What the hell was that underneath? It looked like ancient plaster mixed with hay or straw. Or clay? I knocked it off, coughing when the dust created a cloud around me.

I should have been wearing a mask, but I couldn't be bothered.

Sweating buckets, I cleared about one meter of wall on the eastern corner. Under the layers of old facade, on top of the large boulders of the granite ground, lay the main beam. It was light gray, only a little thicker than my arm, with rounded corners and small fissures along its length. I looked at the three-hundred-year-old piece of wood. Three hundred years.

And now it's decided to quit?

I slammed the axe against it, and the wood yielded easily. Dropping the axe to the ground, I grabbed a fistful of dry splinters. The wood disintegrated in my hand. I could dig holes in it with my fingers. I scratched at it, then at the bare wall planks above.

It was all rotten. All of it.

I didn't realize I'd been crying until I heard an outraged voice from behind me.

"Vad i hela friden g?r du?" What on Earth are you doing?

I recognized the voice. It was Inger.

I swallowed and used my T-shirt to wipe my face.

Bending down to retrieve my axe, I didn't look at her.

"Hello, Inger, how are you?"

"Have you gone mad?"

"I'm renovating the facade," I said lightly.

"What?"

I walked around toward my porch.

"You can't just take an axe to a house like that!"

"It's my house."

She looked shocked, then laughed uncomfortably. "You're crazy." Her little terrier barked at me.

After reaching my porch, I spun around and faced her, not caring anymore if she noticed my red-rimmed eyes. With the axe still in my hand, I glared at her.

"Get off my lawn!"

She gasped.

Then I went inside and slammed the door shut.