tearing apart

first off, i feel i must apologize for the jumbled up mess the pictures seem to be. i wanted them to be a bit more organized and neat looking, but i was having lots of trouble uploading my images, so i guess i'll settle for what i have.

our first day up to work on the house was january 2. the 3 boys were all anxious to get started ripping out the plaster and lath. we figured we might as well put all that energy and testosterone to work! D, N and G got right to work ripping and tearing. they soon perfected a system that seemed to work well, and used it to do all the rooms. first, one boy would scrape all the plaster off the ceiling. then it would be shoveled into a tub, (dave had to make a Lowe's run to get more tubs to keep up with them!) and carried out to the dumpster. next, the same for the walls, being careful not to get electrocuted with the old wires in the wall! after the room was relatively clean, they took out all the lath- ceilings and walls, and put that in a huge pile outside. working together they did the bathrooms, master bedroom, living rooms, hallway- up and down, kitchen and laundry room in very short order. there are a few pictures of this undertaking, but soon i had to stop taking any more pictures, as with all the plaster dust flying around, the camera could no longer "see"!

meanwhile, dave was ripping out the nasty old bathroom that had been plunked right where the front door was supposed to be. that didn't take too long, and opening up the hallway again to let in all the southern light really made a difference. i can't wait until the new front door goes in. dave got a beautiful special order door from Lowe's- mahagony with an oval window, gold caning and sidelights.

i came up one of the days they were there, and oversaw the cleaning out of the remainder of the junk in the house. also, the basement needed a fair amount of attention. decades earlier, a very industrious and prolific woman had canned just about anything you could imagine- from meat and corn, to cherries and pickled something-or-other, and the jars were all still in the basement. they all needed to be sorted and emptied. G and N helped me with this job. (too bad we already did chemistry last year, as there were some amazing looking molds growing in some of the jars!)

dave and the boys spent lots of time at the house in january, as he had several vacation days to use. they made lots of progress, and we found truth in the saying- "it has to get worse before it gets better"