Technically, I suppose we aren’t the Mole Family anymore, as we have moved above ground (shading our eyes from the vicious daylight).  But since this is a story of our continued renovations, I feel it justifies the heading.

Our driveway and front yard are now what’s being renovated (for the most part—there are still parts of the interior of the house being worked on).  The kids and I were having dinner out last night as the workers were working late in the kitchen installing a new piece of granite.  (That turned out beautifully as you can see.)

When we came back from dinner, the door from the garage into the kitchen was locked, as it should be.  We don’t have the keys yet for that door but there is a lockbox for that very purpose.  We opened up the lockbox only to discover that there was no key.

No problem, I think.  We’ve had this happen before.  We have keys to the basement door and will just get in that way.  So I dispatch handy-dandy son to make this happen (children aka slaves are so very useful).  Handy-dandy son returns after scampering down there to say he can’t unlock the door because it’s been boarded up.  Daughter then remembers and mentions that the same is true for the front door.

So, to recap:  the doors that we have keys for have been boarded up and are inaccessible.  The door that we do have access to we have no keys for.  I am beyond delighted at this turn of events.  You’ll be pleased to know that no profanity issued from my lips (which, in full disclosure, is not the same as no profanity crossing my mind).

So, I call our contractor’s son and tell him what our issue is.  He calls back a few minutes later to say that there are keys taped to a shelf for the garage door.  I find them and think, “Great!”  Only to discover that the keys don’t work.  I call back.

After about 40 minutes, the contractor’s other son arrives.  First thing he does is try the keys.  (I am mildly annoyed by this–while I am generally not handy, I am able to use keys–but then I realize that I would have done exactly the same thing if I had been him.)  The keys don’t work.  He doesn’t have a key to the garage door.  So, after mulling it over, he gets a drill from his car, squelches through the mud that was our front yard (did I mention that it has been pouring rain since we got home?), removes the plywood boarding up our front door, unlocks it, comes and unlocks the garage door, and then reinstalls the plywood.

It’s now been over an hour since we’ve gotten home, but at least, we’re inside the house, which is a vast improvement.  And working keys have been promised to us tomorrow.

It was a fitting end for a day that began with a bomb threat at the school, but that’s a story for another day.