Lazy Sunday, Rainy Monday

Sunday and Monday were demo days 9 and 10, but really, not much happened in the way of destruction. It's been unusually warm in Ohio for December, and Sunday it was overcast and in the low 60's. We spent a lot of time outside, making a fire, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, climbing trees, and exploring the woods.

The girls put their fire building skills from girl scouts to the test.

 Lexi was trying to pull herself up the tree.

Lexi got to push Lilly up the tree.

And then Lilly's shoe got stuck in between the tree trunks!

They also enjoyed making chalk art all over the concrete. There's a nice patio area, sidewalks, and a concrete front porch to decorate.

Time for S'mores!!

We found a few spots full of these beetles. I did some quick internet looking, and we believe they are pink spotted ladybird beetles. They are good at eating aphids and lots of other insect eggs, so they are definitely beneficial to the neighboring fields and our future garden. 

My brother and dad decided to haul up the lawn mower, just to see how it would handle the long, thick grass that has been left to grow wild for at least 4 years. It clogged easily, so it was slow going, but amazingly enough it did cut it down.

We now have a path to the West field where the R/C planes fly.

We also have a decent pathway from the house to the shop.

 

Of course the planes had to make an appearance since we spent most of the day outside.

We did manage to work on the flooring in the spare room for a tiny bit, and pull off the door and base trim in the laundry room. A few doors made their way to the garage from upstairs as well. The doors all need a good scrubbing, and they'll just be in the way when we actually get to the point of sanding floors, so we might as well just take them off now.

Today isn't much of a workday either. We went up to the house over lunch today and pulled a few staples out of the floor, and quickly took off the doors to the kitchen cabinets.

 While we were there the trash guys came by with another dumpster since we filled the first one over the weekend.

The girls threw a few piece of paneling in the new dumpster before we left.

 

Progress is going to really slow down this week. Luke has tons of work to do for both his day job and photography, so he can't keep taking half days to work at the house. Hopefully the electrician gets finished up this week enough to get the power turned on, then we'll be able to go up in the evenings. 

Demo Days 6, 7, Santa, and 8!

Thursday and Friday were spent working on flooring. Thursday we finished ripping out the fiberboard in the living room, and on Friday we finished the library.

Here's the living room. Mopping it over really brought out some of the original stain color.

The girls hung out with us on Friday while we finished the library.

Here's the library. It still has some staples on the floor, but we'll get to them.

Today we had our Build and Grow at Lowe's. We built a holiday train and then got to visit with Santa! This is Henna's first year that she actually spoke to him, although I had to walk up with her.

My dad and brother came up to the house today, which was a huge help! We filled the dumpster with everything we had in the front yard, only to pile more carpet and paneling in the yard while we wait for the dumpster to get taken away and emptied.

Our focus was the upstairs. We got the carpet ripped out of the 3 bedrooms up there that had carpet, pulled out the plywood that was down on the office floor, and pulled out most of the paneling in the hallway and staircase.

Here's the front loft bedroom so far.

This is the John Deere bedroom. It'll be Luke's office, and since it had plywood instead of fiberboard, we got most of the flooring uncovered today.

Here's the back loft bedroom. We may work on this some tomorrow since it has plywood down instead of fiberboard.

And finally the staircase and hallway.

We also had to take a time out and fly the plane a little more.

Tomorrow we will be back at it again. We may try and take off all of the doors upstairs and put them in the garage so we can scrub them down later, but mostly we will probably be working on uncovering floors...

This is what we have to look forward to. Piles and piles of tetanus!

Demo Day 2!

Sunday was our official Day 2 of Demo work. Luke had a photo shoot in the evening, and with a late morning to say good-bye to Nana and Papaw before they left for West Virginia, we only had a few daylight hours to work.

Of course, work couldn't start until flying was finished. Luke had already been out Saturday after the girls' party with his brother, so Sunday was dad's turn. There is talk of building runways with lights and R/C race tracks...

We succeeded in pulling out the stove, since it was something quick to grab and wasn't bolted down like the range hood or dishwasher that still need pulled out.

We also got the drop ceiling frame out of the kitchen. Tearing things apart made us realize that the kitchen used to be two separate rooms, and the library was also split into two rooms before.

This is the guest bedroom floor. Originally we were going to have our contractor replace this flooring, along with the flooring in the living room and library. We've ripped a tiny section out of the living room and found hardwood, and this is the section we ripped in the guest bedroom. The fiber board has been nailed down practically every inch, so ripping this out of at least 3 rooms (it may be upstairs under the carpet too) is a slow going process! As long as they aren't totally shot, we plan on refinishing them!

 Here's part of some treasure we found next to the chimney that runs up the kitchen wall. Someone must have been doing some research on Native Americans down around Bolivar. Pretty interesting, but it would have been cooler had it been something to do with the house.

These are the cabinets by the eat in area in the kitchen. You can see the gap between the cabinets and chimney where the papers were shoved. Our idea for this is to actually knock out a good section of the wall and make it a pass through to the living room. We plan on painting the kitchen cabinets since we don't have the budget to replace them right now, but these upper cabinets are seriously bowed, and more than likely we will break them taking them out.

The electrician and furnace guy are set to come out this week to do their thing. We've got to get propane service set up ASAP. Our general contractor probably won't begin until next week, after heat and electricity have been established, which means we have this week to tear out as much as we can. The more we tear out, the more money we will save, since the contractor won't have to do that work. Our big problem is that Luke works 9-5 everyday, and it's pretty difficult to work up there in the dark. We also need to get a U-Haul fairly soon and get everything out of storage and into the small garage, that way we can eliminate our storage bill.

We have no idea how far we will get this week. Everyone works, vacation is a myth for Luke, he still has editing to get done, and we have the girls. I may end up leaving the girls with Luke while he works and I just go up by myself and start chipping away at the fiber board. It all needs done!