Day 17

Today we went to Lincoln to buy wood to replace the floor joists in the first floor bathroom. We also checked out the tile that they had. I think we have a pretty good idea of what kind of tile we will be putting into that bathroom. Once we got home and got the kids in bed Jonathan and I did a bit more research on how we need to work on the bathroom.

Day 16

Today was not a very exciting day for the new house... We stayed at the old house. Jonathan was working on a sketchup drawing of the first floor bathroom. We was trying to make the best design for the shower. And I was doing laundry and giving the kids baths.

We do have a good idea of the tile and how we want the bathroom to look. Now all we have to do is get the floor back in and start making it happen. It should be quite a project as we have not done any tiling or the even harder part, building our own custom shower surround. The placement of the window in the room makes it a little hard to put a standard shower in there.

Day 15

Well, today we headed over to the house to empty the buckets, as it is supposed to rain again tomorrow. And we needed to take a few measurements in the first floor bathroom. We are looking at tile and just how we are going to finish that bathroom.

While we were there I took some more pictures.



This is a picture of one of the 2nd floor bedrooms. We have all of the trash out of the room. The carpet has been cut into pieces and ready to be rolled up and removed. YAY! :)


Here is another picture of Jonathan and my future bedroom on 2nd floor. The carpet has been removed. Now we need to get the old tile out of the room. As you can see there are two buckets off to the side catching rain water.


This is the newly discovered wood floor at the top of the third floor stairs. :D It made me really happy to see this under all of that yucky tile.


Much of the tile floor off of the first room on 3rd floor has been removed.


Here is one of the bedrooms on 3rd floor. We have placed buckets all around the catch the water. But it wasn't enough. We had to put a tarp down on the floor under all of the buckets. Near the bottom of the picture you can see some of the plaster has fallen all of the ceiling due to all of the rain water.


This is another picture of the same bedroom. Inside this closet it was like taking a shower during the rain storm on Sunday. We used this roofing material to try and funnel the water into the buckets.

Day 14

We are not going to the house today. The girls and I have a Tea Party to go to with the Girl Scouts. We have really been looking forward to this fun time. And I don't know about Jonathan, but my back hurts so much I would not be able to do much of anything at the house yet today. I might need even one more day of rest. :( But at least to isn't raining. And we got so much of the stuff tossed out into the dumpster yesterday. That feels really good.

Day 13

April Showers:
This is a sad, sad day. It rained, rained and when it wasn't raining it was pouring. We couldn't find enough buckets, cups and containers of any sort to catch all of the water dripping into our poor house. When I finally thought we had all of the drips with buckets under them, I heard water dripping somewhere else... If I was lucky, it was only dripping, in several places there was a steady stream of water flowing into our house. :( We finally had to put a tarp down on the floor in one of the rooms as there just weren't enough containers to catch all of the water. Then we put bucket on the tarps in the worst areas. It made me want to cry several times. We really need a new roof.

Jonathan and I were thinking about doing the roof with EPDM. It seems easy and fast. We would have really liked to put a tin or copper roof back on. If they had taken a bit of care of that tin roof it would have lasted forever. As it is, it was good for at least 75 years. We would never have to do the roof again. But we just weren't sure about being able to do that kind of roof. While Dad was sleeping, he was thinking that we should just tin the roof and told us that this morning. Dad took some measurements and is going to see how much the tin to do our roof would cost. Jonathan and I are pretty excited that Dad is thinking about helping us with the tin roof. :) It will be so nice when it is done.



Through all of the rain, Jonathan continued to work on removing the floor down to the joists in the first floor bathroom. He now has most of it off. When he gets the last part off we will be able to replace the subflooring. We will be looking at tile that we want to put down in that bathroom and thinking of how we want to finish it.

This is the area where the floor was bad. Jonathan removed the floor boards and now we are going to see about replacing these bad joists.

Mom, Dad and I hauled load after load of things off of third floor. We threw anything we could right out the door and dropped it to the ground. Things that were small, glass or we thought might break into a thousand pieces we carried down and out to the dumpster.

The good news is that we got almost all of the trash and furniture and most all of the yucky carpet ripped up and out in the dumpster. We also go the stove off of third floor and out into the dumpster. Then Dad started prying up the tile and the underlayment in the first room on third floor. While Mom and I carried the pieces down to the dumpster. So we are down to the wood flooring in the first room. Another bit of good news is that in one of the bedrooms on third floor they didn't have tile but linoleum. This seems like it will peal up pretty easily, Dad tested it in one small area just to see how much they had over the wood floor.

Here you can see the wood floor under the two layers of linoleum.

All I can say about today is "No more rain...please, please no more rain."

Day 12

We were at the house again all day long. We started out thinking that we would just be able to put the new toilet in the first floor bathroom. But not long after getting started we found a gapping hole in the floor under the shower. :( Oh, no. Now we have to stop work on putting anything new in until we have ripped up the floor and replaced the boards. The silver lining to this storm is that now instead of having a "usable" bathroom in a day or so, we will have a brand new bathroom in a week or so. It will be nice having everything clean and new. But it also would have been nice to just have a fully working bathroom.

Dad and Mom came over to see the new house and to help us out. We got the rest of the trash off of 2nd floor and a good start on 3rd floor. The second dumpster is now almost full. We will be back to work on Sunday. I am sure that the dumpster will be full then.

We were also able to check out how are second try at tarping work in the rain. The good news it that the area that we got the tarp on is not leaking. :D YAY!

Wow and now the end of another tiring day. It is time to go home and sleep.

When we got home and checked the mail we found the papers from the lawyer... we now have the title of the house. YAY!

Second set of picture... not after yet

Well, here are some of the "cleaner" pictures.



Here is the parlor again. But now at least there is no more huge sectional couch and the floors are mostly clean. We did leave all of that wood there. We are not sure where all of those pieces came from (the old wood) and don't want to toss them in the dumpster unless we know that we don't want them.


And on to 2nd floor. This is our bedroom again, just without all of the trash. Ella says, "I helped clean that up."



And here is the closet. It is empty, and ready to be filled with all of our stuff. :) I really like this closet.

** Zeb crashed. **

Here is fixer Ella. She is working on the chair. She took it apart and put it back together. Now the arms of the chair will stay together. Go Ella! :D

Day 11

Rain is in the forcast for the few days. This is bad news for us and the leaky roof. Not only just because the roof will leak, but because if it rains on the weekend, we won't be able to use that time to work on the roof. :( Rain, Rain stay away, come again some other day.

The kids had today off of school, so I had taken the day off. Jonathan decided to take the day off as well. It was supposed to be nice and sunny. And hopefully we would be able to attach the tarp in a way to keep some rain out. Tarp: take 3.

So off to Beatrice... The roof is the first thing we start working on. We actually started ripping up the old stuff that they had on the roof. One of the things we really wanted to know is just how bad the roof was. We got all of the tar and first layer of roof tossed off of the house and on to the metal part of the roof. It was kind of sad to think that this roof had been on this house for hundred years, and had someone actually taken a little bit more care of it, it would have still been fine. The top of the metal was rusted, but the underside in most areas was just fine. All they would have done was make sure that it had been painted. :( We got the east 1/8 or so of the roof cleaned off and down to bare wood. The really good news is that the wood underneath is actually very good yet. There are only a couple of boards that will need to be replaced. And we started on the bad side of the roof, where most of the leaking is happening. :D

One to tarping: It was actually quite windy yesterday, and for me this is one of the worst parts about being on the roof. Now add the holding onto of a 20x40 foot tarp and I am in a very uncomfortable position. Mostly my job consisted of holding the tarp while Jonathan wrapped the end around a board and nailed it down along the edges of our now expossed wooden roof. This process took more time then I like to think about. I even got a little bit of a sunburn. It was happy when we were finished, both because I was able to get off of the roof and because I think this will do a good job of keeping the rain out of that area this weekend. Still praying that if it rains, it only rains a little, and of course not too much wind please. We are watching the weather and hoping for a few days in a row that we can use to reroof.

After we left the house we headed over t Menards to look at the EPDM roofing materials that they might have. And again we have good news, they actually have it in the store. So we won't have to wait for it to be shipped. Now all we have to do is watch the weather and read up about how to install the EPDM.

Day 10

Well, off to the house again. We carried in our new sink and the rug. While looking at the bathroom to see about putting the sink in, Jonathan realized that the drain pipe would have to be moved as well. So this turned out to not be as easy as we had hoped. Jonathan then made a hole in the ceiling to see just where the pipes in the 2nd floor kitchen were coming from. And guess what, for some reason they had lowered that ceiling in that part of the house. Once through the ceiling he found another ceiling almost a foot up and no pipes. While Jonathan was busy checking on all of the plumbing, Ella and I were on 2nd floor cleaning. Now that the layer of movable garbage is mostly out of the way, it is time to go around and scrub everything with soap and water.

We had to call it a short night, Poor Melinda. She was at a friend's house for her first ever sleepover. And the poor little thing got sick. So we rushed over to pick her up. It is sad enough to be sick, but even worse when you know you are missing the rest of your sleepover. :(

Day 9

Well, today we are not going to be going over to the house. There is a rug that I saw on Craig's list that we are going to buy. There was also a clawfoot tub. But it will likely be gone. There was someone going over to look at it at 5:00. If she doesn't take it the man said he would call me back. But I am not going to get my hopes up for that one. :( Then we need some more PEX tubing to hook up the water in the kitchen. We are also going over to the store to buy a sink and probably a hot water heater. These are both things that we will be needing before we want to move in. So as this was going to be a "shopping" day we figured that we should make it the only shopping day we will need this week.

Tomorrow it will be back to work on the house.

Before

Here are some BEFORE pictures. We took these pictures on March 1st, the second time we went to take a look at the house.



This is a picture of the front stairs in the living room. The stairs aren't too bad. This wall had been closed off to keep the upstairs apartments separated from the first floor apartment. The last owners had opened this back up. The stairs still need just a bit of work but not to bad.


This is a picture of the Parlor. This room is just off of the living room through the sliding pocket doors. It should have French doors that lead to the library. You might notice one of the French doors leaning against the wall behind the lovely green couch. I mostly am adding this just as an example of how much 'stuff' was left in the house. They had also been working on this room. Some of the old plaster had been replace with sheetrock. But it was never finished.


Imagine now, that you have walked through the French doors and have entered the library. And this is what you would see. I love the windows in here. It is a very bright and open room. At one time there was a fireplace on the northwest wall. We can see the cracks in the plaster where it is hiding. The door next to the window is not original to the house. I am not sure we are going to leave it here or not. We were hoping to add a wrap around porch from the front of the house over to this side. But it could go all the way to the kitchen if we did decide to take this door out. But this is not something we are thinking too hard about right now.



This is a picture of the Dining room. You can see the water damage on the wall. This is where the gutter is bad and causing water to pour into the house all the way down on first floor. :( Everyone needs to check their gutters. We will be working on the gutters as soon as we fix the roof. You can also see the butler's pantry cupboard there under the stairs. I really like this and hope that whatever water damage there might be can be repaired.



This is the bathroom on first floor. It seems like they were just getting ready to replace the sink and toilet. They had put the shower surround in here, but the water and drains were never hooked up. We are thinking hard about what to do here in this room. First on the list was to get all of the extra stuff out.



I added this picture so that everyone could see what I mean when I am talking about the 'tile' floor. This picture was taken in the first floor kitchen. This type of tile is covering all of the floor except in the living room, parlor and library. Several of the rooms have yucky carpet over the yucky tile. :( I hope we find nice wood under there somewhere.



This is one of the bedrooms up on second floor. I think this is the room Jonathan and I are going to use as our bedroom. But during the first stage, the girls might be sharing this room until we get the third floor finished. Each of the kids will have their own bedroom up on third floor once we get them ready. Again you can notice all of the stuff and/or trash laying around in here.



A really neat closet up on second floor. (full of trash)


That is at least a look at the first floor and part of the second floor. Next I will work on getting some stage two pictures up. I don't think just cleaning things up counts as AFTER pictures.

Day 8

With work and school, we are only able to get over to the house to work after supper. We had a very quick meal in Hickman and piled into the van to head off for Beatrice. We had packed the back of the van full last night. These are things that we own, but don't think we will be needing in the next couple of weeks. It seems that many things in our house are items like this. Of course since we are spending most of our "free-time" working at the house, all of our craft and hobby supplies and tools are things we can box up. We are going to start taking boxes of things over as often as we can. If we are lucky, much of our stuff will already be at the house when we are ready to move in.

As we parked the car we noticed that one of the tarps was loose or missing completely. We started our evening out by taking all of the boxes from the van and piling them up in the dining room. Several of the boxes were pieces of a commodore computer. As soon as we were settled Zeb started opening up those boxes to see if he could get things set up. We brought this to give the kids a little something to do.

Then it was time to take a good look at the roof again. We hiked up the stairs to third floor and up the ladder. From the roof it did appear that the larger of the two tarps had come off completely and blew away? At least to doesn't look like it is going to rain for a couple of days. We decided that we just needed to take the tarp off. We started taking the ropes off and Jonathan noticed that the other tarp had just gotten all twisted up and was half hanging off of the roof. It took a bit of time to get all of the ropes off and the tarps somewhat folded up. So I guess we are back to just praying for at least mostly dry weather. We are hoping to take a good look at the roof this weekend, maybe even start on fixing it. If we get that finished, I guess the good news is that I probably wouldn't have to get back on the roof for a good long time. I would be very happy about that. I do sometime want to figure out how to get my telescope up there. And make it a safe and comfortable place for me to be. I am thinking railings or some kind of enclosure. I think I would have a great view of the stars with nothing in the way as our roof seems to be the highest point in the area.

Once back inside, Jonathan cut a piece of the carpet up on third floor. We were hoping to see wood floors under the carpet. But found what we expected. Most of the floor is covered in this old and yucky tile. To bad.

The last part of our evening was taking some more of the trash out of the yard. Old roofing material is really heavy. The yard is mostly cleaned up. And here we go adding more things to our To Do list. Now we need to mow. :) I am looking forward to this yard as it is much more flat than our yard in Hickman.

On the way back to Hickman we were talking about just what we would need to have done before we could move in. It will be so much easier when we don't have to keep making the drive, and of course give us more time to work on things. Part of me is just ready to scrub and clean everything and see if we can just move in. And the other thinks oh, yuck, maybe we should make at least a couple of the rooms new and nice first. Well, I guess we need to think about this just a bit more.

Day 7

Well, there is not much to report for today. We decided that we needed a day of rest. So instead of going over to Beatrice to work on the house, we went to Lincoln to see if we could find a toilet that would be small enough to fit into the first floor bathroom without leaving the wall cutout as it currently is. We found some really nice stuff at the Handyman store. But now we need to go back to the house and measure the bathroom again. But I think we will be going back to that store soon. There were quite a few things there that I liked. And best of all, just as the commercial says, everything is on the floor so you can get a good look at it. :) We also stopped to get another load of empty boxes. Once we got back to Hickman we loaded the van with the boxes that we filled the other day so they are ready to take over to Beatrice tomorrow. And our new and empty dumpster should be at the house waiting for us to fill it up. :) I can't wait. Let's count how many times we go up the stairs tomorrow. (We have most of the old furniture and trash already taken off of first and second floor. So tomorrow we will be bringing stuff down from the third floor. :D )

Day 6

We went over to Beatrice and the first thing that we noticed was that the tarp had pulled loose in one part over night. And the wind was really blowing it around. I headed up to the third floor to make sure that it hadn't broken anything, like windows. It hadn't..thank goodness. But once Jonathan and I got up on the roof again we saw that the tarp had broken free in one place and was starting to rip in another. Jonathan found one more piece of rope and we got it tied down again. I am not sure it is going to last for very long. I am hoping for lots of calm and still days... :) But really can we even expect that in Nebraska - the land of constant wind?

Then the next part of our day was moving things around. We started taking things down from third floor that we are going to try to sell. After the 6th or 7th trip up to third floor and back down, I was ready for a rest. That is just a lot of stairs.

Our main focus today was to fill the dumpster with all of the trash that we were putting in the "Trash Room", or I should say the Parlor. This room already had this huge sectional couch in it. So it was an easy choice for the "Trash Room". To get that huge couch out of the house, Jonathan had to cut it apart. Boy do I love that saw. That couch would have just been too heavy for the two of us to move on our own any other way. It was also nice to just drop it off of the porch from the kitchen.

One dumpster full! Tomorrow we will call and have them pick it up. Then have them bring another one. This time we will go for the 20 yard size. :) WOW do we have a lot of garbage. And we haven't even started ripping down the plaster. We might be starting on that this week. I think we would like to make some sort of shoot that we can slide all of the plaster and yuck down from third floor without having to drag it all the way through the house. We will have to see how that works.

After almost a week of working in the house we have been making some discoveries. We now know that there was at one time a fireplace in the basement. There was also a fireplace in the library. It is currently hidden behind the plaster wall. We think that there is still one hiding behind the wall in one of the tower room on 2nd or 3rd floors. Also, the wall that is between the parlor and the library is a "new" wall. There was a wall between these rooms at one time, but the "new" wall is in a different place. So we will have to decide what we are going to do about that. And the outside door that is in the library was not always there. Next time we go to the house I will have to make sure that I take some more pictures and add them to my posts.

Day 5

It did rain. Now we get to see how much the tarps helped...or if they even stayed in place. All of the kids are up and have finished breakfast so now we need to pack up a few things and head over to the new house.

Back from the house:
Well the good news is that the tarps were still in place when we got to the house. And the GREAT new is that all of the buckets up on third floor are still empty. I guess that means that our tarping has done the job and it is keeping the water out of the house.

The kids and I got most of the rooms up on 2nd floor picked up. We still have one more bedroom. And the bathrooms and kitchen all need good scrubs. But it is looking a lot better up there. Jonathan spent most of the day getting the rest of the PEX pipe upstairs for the bathroom. It is all there and ready to be connected to the sink and tub.

Then we had to do some hunting to try and find how they had the water going to the 2nd floor kitchen. We still don't know where that water line is coming from. We are going to do some more exploring in that area next time we are at the house.

After owning the house for 5 days, and many (possibly hundreds of) trips up and down the stairs we are feeling a bit sore. But Jonathan claims that soon we will be very strong. ;) Wow I hope he is right. One thing is sure, when we lay down in bed at night we have no trouble going to sleep.

Day 4

Friday:

Jonathan went ahead and took today off as well. So in the morning after getting the kids off to school, he and I went over to the house. He had figured out that the hot water heater didn't actually work. And had looked at new toilets for the one on the first floor. But because of the size of the space we would need a special sized toilet. So the plan was still to get the second floor toilet working. After looking over things at the house we headed over to Ace Hardware to get some more supplies. It won't be long before all of the people who work there will know us by name. We seem to get over there at least once a day. Then back at the house Jonathan helped me to move some of the stuff that was too heavy for me to get to the dumpster by myself. Then he was back to working on the plumbing. We also went up on the roof. NOT my favorite place! The second floor roof was not to bad. But wow it is quite scary on the third floor roof. But once we get the toilet working we will have to start on the roof. So I have to get used to it.

We ate our sandwiches and chips sitting on the floor in the library. After a lunch break, Jonathan headed back down to the basement and I was off to work.

After school the kids and I went on down to Beatrice to see how we could help Daddy. I brought supper and our cardtable and chairs... Now we don't have to eat on the floor. :)

Great news! Jonathan got the toilet working on second floor. And just in time, as soon as we walked in the door the kids were already lining up to use it.

After supper it was back up to the roof.... (This is me being scared :O ) It was supposed to rain over night and we wanted to get some tarps up and over the worst parts of the roof in an attempt to see if we could keep some of the rain out.

That took a bit of doing. But I am getting a bit more used to the roof. I only stand in the middle parts and crawl along the edge. And I am still very worried when Jonathan stands near the edges. But we were up there for a couple of hours and neither of us fell off. We also got most of the roof covered with tarps.

Day 3

Jonathan has the day off again today. And Melinda is feeling better so she is off to school and I am off to work. I will actually be working all day instead of just the afternoon because a couple of the other teachers will be gone. So I put the kids on the bus, gather my own lunch and Jonathan and I leave together. He is heading off to work on the house again and I am off to school.

I called Jonathan at lunch to see how things had been going. And then I called him again after work. He was having trouble with the first floor toilet. He was getting the water hooked up there, but for some reason the toilet was leaking. But he did have water up and running to the bathroom sink. YAY! So he was going to see if he could get the water to the second floor toilet. (This is still our first goal... flushing toilet. It just won't work to have the kids around without having a working toilet.)

Zeb's Cub Scout Crossover was tonight so we weren't going to be able to work in the house after school.

Day 2

Today Jonathan got the manifold mounted and hooked up to the main water supply. Wow this sounds pretty easy. But first of course we had to follow the maze of water pipes and other miscellaneous things in the basement to the source of the water. Then Jonathan made sure that there was a main shut off value. He then worked on cutting out a bunch of the old pipe so that we would be able to get the new Pex pipe through without all of that maze of old stuff getting in the way. During this time I helped Jonathan as he needed a second pair of hands, and while off on my own, I first made a semi-clean space for Melinda. She was still home from school sick. I vacuumed all of the yuck out of the room. We set up the computer and a chair for her so she could watch some movies. She seemed to enjoy her special day in the house watching movies and drinking juice while Mommy and Daddy worked. After Melinda was all set, I started filling up the dumpster that they delivered for us with yucky garbage that I collected from the rooms closest to where Melinda was in.

Now of course Zeb and Ella had not gotten to come and explore the house with Jonathan, Melinda and I the day before as they were in school. So we thought that they would like to come over after school. We went to Norris to pick them up and headed back to Beatrice. We did a bit more work and let the kids explore a bit.

It was a pretty good day. Jonathan made quite good progress on the plumbing, but we had to stop before we got the first floor toilet working. There always seem to be little things that slow you down and give you trouble. But if we are lucky there will be water to flush tomorrow.

New Home - Day 1

The Yucky House:





Today we signed all of the papers, turned over the money and got the keys to our new house. Now is when the real adventure begins. After signing the papers at the lawyer's office, we went over to the house to have another look around and see just what we were going to be doing. We didn't have the key yet, so in Melinda's words, "We sneaked in." At 1:00 we were able to go back to the lawyer's office and pick up the key. Then we went back to the house and did some more exploring. We needed to figure out just what we needed to do to start working on replacing the plumbing. The very first project was going to be getting water to at least one toilet. This is a real need, especially because we were planning on having the kids there with us while we were working.