Day 77

Today we didn't go over to the house. The kids and I spent the day having fun going to the Children's musuem and the Dinosaur musuem and eating in the park. In the evening Melinda went over to her best friend's house to play. But we will be back to work again tomorrow.

Day 76

The kids and I went over to the new house this morning after Jonathan left for work. The girls were dusting and cleaning the floor in the Green room and the Tower room.



Zeb was helping me. I was taking up the old floor in the hallway. Zeb was filling up the buckets and carrying the rubble down to the dumpster. The floor at the top of the steps is in really bad shape. (Just like we thought) This is were the gutters are bad and pouring water against the house. So there was a lot of damage. The wood floor in the rest of the hallway looks pretty good though.


Here is the really bad part of the floor. :( Wow we are going to have to do something about this.

After Jonathan got home from work we had supper and headed back over to the house. Jonathan and I were working on the bathroom. We were taking down the wainscoting, and starting to knock down the plaster. We might be able to use some of the old wainscoting. A lot of it was damaged by water in some way. But we separated out the good and the bad. We are making progress but still have over half of the room yet to go. Then we have to work on the ceiling.


Here is a picture of the bathroom as we finished working for the night. I had mentioned to Jonathan that if we just knocked down the plaster but left the lathe it would look like we are going to the bathroom in an outhouse. :)

Day 75

Back to work on the bathroom...
Jonathan started out the day by mowing the lawn. While he was outside doing this, I was riping up the tile flooring in the bathroom. We also worked on getting some of the wainscoting off of the wall. When we get all of this off we will be able to get the plaster and lathe off of the wall and ceiling.


Here is the bathroom after we had finished working for the day. What a mess we make...

Day 74

We started the day by filling the back of the van with the boxes of stuff that I have been packing. Once over at the new house we unloaded the van and stacked the boxes up in the dining room. There is starting to be quite a lot of boxes piled up in that room.

Then we started work on the second floor bathroom. Today's plan was to take down the wall where the bathtub used to be and start ripping everything else up in there.

Jonathan pulled the pieces of the wall down and I carried things out to the dumpster. He got the sheetrock off of two of the walls. We still have a lot to do in that room but we have gotten a lot done.

Here is the bathroom after we finished working today. Now you can see the wainscoting that was hidden under the sheetrock. We are not sure how much of this can be saved. But either way we would like to refinish it and put it back in the bathroom or find something similar to replace it.

After lunch I went into the Green Room and finished removing the nails from the floor. This is the room that Zeb is going to be using when we move in. Now all that is left to do in here is wash everything down really well and we will be able to start using this room. :) It actually looks pretty good in there. Jonathan set up the commodore on an old desk in the corner. Zeb is pretty excited about this.

Day 73

The kids and I went to Beatrice to sign-up for swimming lessons. We also got our new library cards for the library in Beatrice. We also went swimming at the pool.

We are giving Jonathan's back one more day of rest. We will be heading over to Beatrice in the morning. Our plan is to work on the bathroom.

Day 72

Jonathan's back is doing much better, but we are going to give it just a day or so more before working over at the house again. Once the sun goes down here a bit, I think I will load the van full of boxes again. So that the kids and I can take another load over tomorrow morning.

Day 72

I know that today isn't over yet, but I thought I would get a head start on the blog. This morning after Jonathan left for work the kids and I went over to Beatrice to unload the things that we had packed yesterday. Once we got everything in the house, I started working on the floor in the 2nd floor tower room. Now that we have the closet and the kitchen wall out of there we can get to the rest of the tile. I got almost half if it pulled up and taken down to the dumpster. Wow was I sweating today. I know that it is work to do, but now that the temperatures have reached normal for summer it really makes a difference. I decided to stop and head back home for lunch.

Oh, the girls and I took some milk out to the baby kittens in the garage. I want to make friends with them. Right now they are still pretty scared of us. But hopefully soon we will be able to hold them.

Day 71

While we were waiting for Kevin to come and check on our broken a/c, Zeb and I loaded the van full of boxes and containers that we have been packing. I also cleaned, organized and packed some more things. I didn't know if we would get to take a load to Beatrice or not, but I thought I would be ready. Jonathan's back was feeling a bit better, but they weren't finished working on the a/c until after supper so we didn't get over to Beatrice today.

Day 70

Wow is it hot today, 98 degrees. The kids and I went into Lincoln to go swimming with Granny Terri, Deseray and Axel. Fun was had by all. We were expecting to head over to Beatrice after Jonathan came home from work. But his back was bothering him. So we spent a quiet night at home... only to discover that the a/c really isn't working in our house. :(

Day 69

Happy Father's Day!

We took Jonathan out to eat at our favorite Chinese buffet in Lincoln for lunch. Then he wanted to spend the afternoon shopping in the Thrift stores. We did an awful lot of looking but didn't end up buying many things. I did find some nice PJ's for the girls and a couple of educational computer programs for the kids.

Day 68

The weekend again...
It is long past time that we need to get the lawn mowed. So though this is not an exciting or destructive day, we did do work over in Beatrice. Jonathan used the mower and I went around trimming branches off of trees and finding the side of our house from all the brush that had grown up around it.

Melinda had a birthday party to attend in the afternoon. So we cut the day short and took her in to her party.

Day 67

We took a load of things over to the house. Next on the list was exploring the wiring. Right now we have the power shut off to the east half of the 2nd floor. We did this because we were taking out the wall and it had several outlets in it. The other wall that we want to take out has the box for the power to the 3rd floor and the box for the east half of 2nd floor. Before we can take out this wall we need to figure out where we are going to run the wires to keep power in these areas. So we took several trips up and down trying to follow where the power wires were going in the walls. We do think that we have it figured out. But until we start taking that wall down we can't be completely sure.

Day 63-66

June 15 - 18

We have not been working on the house the past few days. Jonathan did something to his back at my parents' house this weekend and we are giving him a break.

I did get to show Myrta, Caleb and Blake around the new house yesterday after VBS. I am packing more and more things up in boxes and loading them into the van to take over to the new house. :) The funny thing is that by just looking around here I can hardly tell that we have taken things out of this house. But the pile of boxes in the Dining room of the new house is getting pretty big.

Day 62

Today we were still celebrating birthday's. Saturday it was Adam's birthday party, and today we are having Jake's birthday party. So there was no working on the house.

Day 61

Well today we are off to my parents' house. We have two birthday parties to go to this weekend. So we won't be going over to the house. Jonathan is planning on packing up some of his electronics and his computer. He is working on setting up an intercom system for the house. Right now it looks like he is going to use old palms as the controls in each of the rooms.

Day 60

This evening we loaded up the van with some of the boxes that I have been packing the last few days and took them over to the new house. I am going to continue to pack boxes and take them with us, hopefully this way moving won't be such a big deal. If I get it done right, most of our stuff should be there by the time we are ready to move in.

Then we went back up to the 2nd floor tower room. Jonathan continued to take down pieces of the wall and I carried the pieces out to the dumpster.



The first two pictures show the wall before we took it out.



Here is what the room looks like without the kitchen and the closet in it.


On one of our trips to the dumpster we noticed that the birds were flying and circling again. There are just a ton of these birds that fly around our neighborhood.

Day 59

Jonathan wanted a break from the house and routine today. So we stayed in Hickman. I had started packing things into boxes in the afternoon. I continued this after supper. I will soon have a couple of vanloads of stuff ready to take over to the new house.

Day 58

The first thing I wanted to find out when we got to the house tonight was if we had hot water. :D YAY! We did.

We ate supper at the house tonight so that we could get right to work. Jonathan cut the cabinets into smaller pieces so that we could carry them down to the basement. He is going to use these for storage in the workshop. We got them carried down to the basement. Then we continued to take out the wall that we want to remove in that room. We are getting close to having that room ready to use. I have a bit more floor to remove. And we have one part of the wall left.

I don't have any pictures of the house to add here. But I liked this pictures of Melinda trying out her new Heely's from Granny Terri.


Go Melinda! :)

Day 57

First stop today was Sears to buy a new water heater. I am so ready for hot water. :D We went into the store and figured that we would have to order the water heater. But I was so excited that they had the one we wanted in stock. The Sears in Beatrice is only 2 blocks away from the house, so they loaded the water heater into the back of the van. We had to put down the seat, so the kids and I just walked to the house.

Once we had the water heater in the house, Jonathan started to get it set up and working.

Jeremy and Axel came over to help us out tonight. Jeremy and I started hauling the rest of the junk out of the tower room on 2nd floor. When we were finished we went up to 3rd floor and started knocking down some more plaster and lathes.


The plaster and lathe knocked out of one more wall. :)

Day 56

Monday again... lets rest.

Day 55

Mom and Dad stayed over to help us some more today. Dad wanted to use up the rest of the tin and see how much of the roof we still had left. When he had used up all of the tin, there was only a 40 inch by 16 foot strip left. Next time he comes up it should be no problem to finish the roof as there won't be any corners, bends or triangle pieces.


Here is Mom working in the tower room.

Look at some of the mess we had to clean up. :( And this is only a small part of the mess we make in each room when we tear down the plaster and the lathe. I like cleaning up the lathe much more then the plaster. We can just toss it out the window then walk down to the ground and start picking up the sticks. Plus it is much lighter to carry then the plaster is.

Then we spent some more time working up on the plaster and lathe on third floor. Even Zeb and Ella got to help with this. We had them loading up the buckets. Grandpa was lowering them out the door and down to the ground where Grandma and I unhooked them and carried them to the dumpster. The kids were not fast enough, so Daddy had to finish loading up the buckets. Wow were we tired. We didn't quite get all of the plaster out that we had knocked down. But we were ready to stop.Here is the room again after we have cleaned up most of the mess. :D Wow does it look better.

This is the great wallpaper that we found hidden under layers of paint in the third floor tower room.

Grandpa and Grandma headed home to Worms. And we decided to take the kids to a movie. We went to see Up. That was a good movie. It did make me sad. His house reminded me of our new house.

Day 54

Saturday again. Earlier this week we had thought it was going to be a quiet slow weekend. (My parents were going to Colorado.) But it ended up that Mom, Dad, Philip, Andrea and the kids came down to work. :)



Dad and Philip started up on the roof. They are getting really close to have it finished. They probably would have gotten it finished this weekend, but expected to run out of tin.

This is the only part of the roof that is left. They had to stop. It gets really hot up there on all of that tin. There was only a little tin left and Dad was planning on putting the rest of it up on Sunday.



Jonathan was in the basement. He finished cleaning out the back room. Jonathan found a dead bat during his cleaning time. When he had the room all cleaned out, he started working on the wiring and the lights we had bought the night before.


Not sure if anyone but us can notice, but Jonathan has taken down tons of wire and pipe that was one the ceiling. And his has put put the new work lights. He also hung the wood beams on the back wall. Soon there will be cabinets hanging on those beams.

Mom, Andrea, and I were mostly working on the plaster and lathe up on the third floor. And after it got too hot to be on the roof, Dad and Philip came down and worked with us.


This is the chimney in the 3rd floor tower room and the wall all exposed. To the right is where the closet was, it is now all open to the other bedroom on 3rd floor.

We had one more big project today. We wanted to get the clawfoot tub up on second floor and if possible get the old tub out to the dumpster. Well, it was easier to get the clawfoot tub up to second floor then it was to get the other tub down. In the end, Dad had to bust it up into pieces with the sledge hammer. This pieces were still very heavy and hard to carry down the stairs and out to the dumpster.


Here is a picture of the old bathtub broken up into pieces.

Day 53

Today we went into Lincoln to buy some lights and electrical supplies so that Jonathan could work on getting the shop set up in the basement. He will be able to get started on this over the weekend.

Day 52

The new dumpster was delivered this morning. This is dumpster #4... We got right to work on it. Jonathan and I hauled most of rest of the trash from the basement, at least the big pieces. We still need to get in there and sweep and pick up the rest of the little stuff. Then we sorted through the rest of the wood leaning against the wall and took the pieces we didn't want out to the dumpster.

Next we went up to the 2nd floor tower room where we had been working this week. We took down the sheetrock and rubble. Now we just need to move the cabinets down to the basement. Jonathan is going to use the old kitchen cabinets from the 3rd floor kitchen and the 2nd kitchen on 2nd floor down in the basement to hold his tools and stuff. With the little shelves that are already down there, he might have enough storage space to get things organized down there. :)



Here is a picture of our dumpster... it has only been with us for part of the day and it is already nearly 1/3 the way full. YAY! Something about an empty dumpster really bothers me.

Day 51

Tonight, Jonathan and I continued working on the wall in the 2nd floor tower room. I am really liking how taking this wall out is opening up this room.


Here you can see that most of the wall has been taken out. We now need to get the kitchen cabinets out so that we can take the last part of the wall out.


Here is a picture of the mess we made by taking out this wall.

Day 50

We headed over to Beatrice to see how much it had been raining and leaking inside the house. :( There were a couple of areas that were wet up on 3rd floor. But this is not really a surprise. The only leaks are in the rooms where there is only a tarp covering the roof. But the good news is that it hadn't leaked that much. It was only damp, not huge puddles. :D

Then we worked a little bit in the 2nd floor tower room. I also took a few more pictures of things happening in the house.
Here is a box of tile that we found in the basement. We think this tile might have been around one of the fireplaces in the house. When we start working on that area we will see if we can use this tile there again.


This is a radio/tv cabinet we found in the basement. It has the booklet that can with it when they bought it. We were thinking of cleaning it up and trying to use it as a place to set up our server.


Someone who owned the house before us really loved wallpaper... We have found 3 big boxes of wallpaper. Does anyone need some?

Day 49

Today we decided to stay here in Hickman. It is time to rest.