Amy had been hankering to get a look behind the wall. So she took off the crown molding and took down one of the boards.	There was brick underneath, but it was covered in an inch of hard plaster. I said "there's no way we're getting that off."	Undeterred, Amy just started ripping down paneling. She said "You have a 30 year mortgage, that's plenty of time to chip all this away."

...
 

So chip I did. It was slow going with a hammer and a screwdriver.	But the plaster came away after a couple of days.	Using her trunk full of power tools, Amy cut away the wooden strips that had supported the paneling. And I began the long long long filthy task of scraping bricks.

...

So I go to Home Depot to buy a drill. I need a drill because all this wire brushing is driving me nuts and I know that there's some sort of wire brush I can put on a drill and save myself lots of time. I'm feeling pretty good in the Tool Corral because I look like Clint Eastwood walking out of the desert; every time I take a step a little cloud of dust dislodges from me in a manly puff. It's a great thing to be covered in dust in Home Depot, people look at you with approval thinking to themselves "ah, look at that guy, he must be building something, while I'm just buying trash bags." But here we get into a very strange place in the normally very orderly world of Male Buying Habits. Typically, when it comes to shopping, men are hunters rather than gatherers. We say "I need <insert item>" we go to the store, we grab said item, pay for it and leave. In and out in 10 minutes. That's the goal. So, with that in mind I pick up this $24 corded Roybi drill which is exactly what I need for the job. I'm going to be doing a lot of drilling in one place and then for the next six years, I won't drill a thing. But this guy next to me, covered in drywall dust, sporting industrial kneepads, filthy goggles hung around his neck, hair sticking out from his yellow hard hat with lots MORE Clint Eastwood desert puffing going on, looks over and says "Oh, buying a drill for your wife?" and immediately I panic. I drop the Roybi like it was a spider and grab a 36 volt Hilti TE 6-A Rotary Hammer drill with a $1,059 sticker price and give him a "what the hell are you talking about kemosabe?" look and edge sideways to the checkout counter talking about some 40 foot sailboat I'm building out of teakwood.  This is exactly how I ended up buying a Leica.