Day 41

On the way home last night Jonathan and I were talking about what we should do next.. We think that we are going to start knocking down all of the plaster and lathe on third floor and in the second floor bathroom. If we can get all of this done before my family comes up again to help we will be able to finish off these rooms. Then we would have help getting the clawfoot tub carried up the stairs and the other tub carried down to the dumpster. Then the second floor kitchen and the second floor bathroom would be mostly clean and new for us to move in. That would be very nice.

It is time to go back to the house to work again. Dad went straight up to the roof. Mom and I started knocking the plaster down in one of the bedrooms on third floor. That is a really dusty job. Jonathan measured some of the rooms up on third floor. Once we get all of the plaster and lathe down we can start wiring and putting in our intercom and network lines. So we need to know where all of these things are going to be.

We started out the day with an odd surprise. The kids were in the Mars room (the room that we have cleaned out and the TV set up for them). Melinda comes out all excited and scared. There is a hole in the floor where the old radiator pipes come up. Melinda had been playing over in that corner when she saw that there was a baby bird stuck in that hole. She says that when she saw it she thought that it was missing it's body and it was dead. But then it blinked and she was scared. So Jonathan tried to remove the floor board to get the bird out. He ended up getting the radiator pipe out and the bird fell down into the floor. When Ella looked in the hole with a flash light she saw what looked like a nest. A couple of weeks ago, I had noticed a mother bird flying into a hole to take care of her babies and I heard the babies. Jonathan decided to let the bird find its own way out and put a bird over the hole so that it wouldn't come back into the room. (I have a picture on my camera of the bird in the hole. But I have to get a cable to get the picture onto my computer. I will get it added later.)

When I went up on the roof to see how Dad was doing, I was surprised to see just how much he had gotten done. WOW! He was getting so much done. But by now, it was really hot up on the roof and on all of that tin. So he needed to come down for awhile and it was time to eat. So we went to the Chinese Buffet. Yummy.


Here is what the roof looks like when it is finished.



Here is that last part of the roof, all tarped and ready for the rain...

After lunch Dad helped us to knock down the plaster. When we had a couple of walls down, Dad started lowering the buckets to the ground and Mom and I went back and forth between taking the buckets to the dumpster and filling buckets for Dad to lower.

Here you can see some of the messy plaster still on the floor. We would do one small area and then haul most of the plaster down to the dumpster.

Jonathan was down in the basement trying to figure out the maze of wiring down there. We want to figure out what goes where so we can safely take everything out and get it all wired and working the way that we want it too.

Then all four of us started taking out some of the lathe and continued to work on knocking down the plaster. The good news is that we got most of that room done and all carried out to the dumpster.
Here is what the room looked like without the plaster on the walls.



This is the wall that we have taken the lathes off of. You can see the chimney in the corner.

Dad went up to finish a bit on the roof and re-tarp the parts that were going to have to wait until next time.

I guess that I used different muscles today because I am just so tired. I am glad to be clean (I just took a shower to wash all of the plaster dust off of me) and just sitting here on my couch.

Now here is the crazy thing, I forgot to take my camera both yesterday and today. So I will be taking pictures of all of the work that we did this weekend the next time we are at the house. I am not sure if we are going to go over to the house tomorrow, or if we will take a day of rest. I guess we will just have to wait and see how we feel in the morning.