So instead of getting up for my usual deadline gauntlet run at the office cubicle Friday morning, I went to work for my friend J.K., a local contractor, to help him demolish a 100-year-plus old store front.

Let me tell you, getting up at 7 a.m. to pound the keyboard for a few hours doesn’t even hold a stress-relieving candle to the therapeutic value gleaned from smashing down a brick wall with a sledge hammer.

J.K., known to a few as John Kelly, has been a local carpenter for the last three decades and began his own solo business, Kelly’s Fine Wood Working, 13 years ago.

I have to admit, I liked J.K. and the job the second I arrived that morning. Unlike some Punching the Clock hosts who take it easy on us, he had a different approach.

After exchanging greetings, I asked what I’d be doing that day. “Well, you see that hammer over there and did you see the brick wall and concrete floor out front?”

Not having a physically challenging job myself, I’m one of those who revel in the occasional bout with labor intensive work, especially when it involves bare handed destruction of property.

And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, J.K.’s close friend and occasional contracting partner Mark Dalrymple leaned over and picked up a jackhammer.

“And if you want, you can take a shot at it with this too,” he said.

Mark also runs his own contracting company, New Construction Company, known to many as N.C.C.

In a line of work that varies greatly from job to job, the two friends will seek the other’s aid in larger projects, and such was the case on this particular one.

Both men are credentialed master carpenters who have dedicated a life long career to the trade. Mark began learning the trade when he was 21. “That was a few decades ago,” joked Mark, who still makes swinging a sledge hammer and pounding concrete look easy.

“Once you’ve done this work for as long as we have, you learn how to pace yourself,” said Mark, offering advice I neglected to take.

Less than 10 minutes after arriving, I felt the first drops of sweat start to roll off my face. They really knew how to pour concrete back in the day and breaking it up was like dismantling a bomb shelter.

I also got to knock down the two-foot high brick wall surrounding the store front and then took the jack hammer from Mark, who had begun chipping away at the concrete floor removing four- to six-inch chunks at a time.