Day 533

My beautiful, shimmering ice castle

Melting in the afternoon sun.

:(

Day 487

This is becoming my log of bats. About 2:00 a.m. I wasn't completely sleeping. Then Merlin jumped off of the bed loudly, which woke me up even more. So I got up to get a drink. When I came back to bed, Merlin was laying up by my pillow. As I laid down, he jumped down again. He stayed on the rug beside my bed in what I felt was an attack position. Now the cat and I have issues...Merlin has decided the best way to get us to do something or maybe just when he feels like it, he will attack us. Sometimes it is playful and sometimes he actually bites. So I rolled over a bit away from the edge of the bed to give him less of a target. (If he can see my hands, legs, ect. he is more likely to attack.) But even with my move it was just moments before he jumped back up on the bed. But instead of stopped there on me, he ran right across me and over Jonathan. Now I am laying on my back and fully awake. And what should I see above me, but a black shadow circling the room. Bat... Merlin hadn't been attacking me, but the bat. So up again. We closed the bat in our room. Got the girls out of bed and in the dining area. And closed off their room and the tower room. Jonathan feels it is easier to get the bats in the bigger room. (and he would know...he had gotten bats in all the rooms here on 2nd floor except the bathroom.) He was hoping to get it out of our bedroom and into the big room. But it didn't turn out that way, they stayed in our room. Jonathan says that Merlin was actually a big help in catching this bat. He knocked him out of the air a couple of times. One more dead bat, one hole in the plaster wall, two tired people.

Day 484

Bat,

Bat,

Oh, Bat

Where do you live?

Why do you fly over my bed at night?

Stay outdoors.

Hunt for bugs around my home.

And as I stand out on my porch,

I will be happy to see you.

We put the kids to bed, and went to our own room to watch a little TV. When we turned it off and were ready to sleep. Jonathan says, "Bat." I was almost asleep. But when I heard that word, I rolled over and saw the bat flying in circles above our bed. It then flew into the tower room. (which is open to the girls' room there is no door there right now.) So we closed our bedroom door and went to get the girls. I got them in our bed and there door closed. So now the bat was shut in those two rooms with Jonathan. He took care of the bat, and I got the girls back in bed. Ella (after walking to our room, getting lost and me having to go back to her room to get her) was really only awake for the last walk back to her bed. Melinda slept through the whole thing. She didn't know that I had carried her from her bed to mine and then back to hers again. We need the clock to stop and let us work for about 2 weeks. Then we would be able to seal up some of the bat entry points and get started on reconstructing the interior walls. The third floor is almost ready for us to wire and put in insulation. Once we get that done we would be able to put up the drywall. Then I don't think we would have these night-time visitors.

Day 482 - 483

We worked up on the third floor again this weekend. We got the rest of the studs down in between the girls' rooms and the bathroom. Then we started working on getting all of the nails out of the boards. Some of them we will be putting back up to form the wall. The rest of them will be cut up to use as fire wood this winter. We also removed the lathe nails from the ceiling and walls in the landing room and Zeb's room. We are planning on getting another dumpster this weekend so that we can get everything cleaned up and start the 'fun' work. When it got to hot Sunday afternoon/evening Jonathan and I went down the the first floor kitchen. We removed the nails from a large pile of lathe. Then we started to cut them into pieces that would fit into our wood stove. These pieces of old wood make starting the stove very easy. After the pieces were cut to the right size we tied them in bundles with twine. We still have a lot of them to do. But we will be very happy for all of these cut and bundled lathe firestarters once winter is here. Saturday afternoon (when it was hotter then we wanted to work) we took a trip into Lincoln. We found a couple of lanterns at Goodwill that we are going to use as the light fixtures in Zeb's room. And we checked out the attic fans at Home Depot. We will be putting one of those in very soon now.

Day 478

Bat, bat

Flying over sleepy girls.

We all headed off to bed tonight. But it wasn't long before Melinda comes running into our room. "There's a bat flying around our room." Soon, Ella was in bed with Melinda and I. And Jonathan was working on getting that bat out of there. Now we would really rather not kill them, if they would just stay out of our house. In the end Jonathan got the bat, but the light fixture got broken. There was glass everywhere. We had the girls sleep on the futon. I spent most of the next day picking glass out of their room, toy tubs, rugs, everywhere.

Looking forward to the day, that all of the wholes have been found and sealed, and our only visitors are ones who come through the door.

Day 474

Wow it has been a long time since I posted anything here.

Mostly it has been hot...

We have done a little bit of work up on the third floor. We are taking some of the studs out. Our plan is to move the bathroom back just a little bit. This will make it possible to make Zeb's room just a little bit bigger and have things in the bathroom set up a little bit more to our liking. As we take down this wall we have been removing the nails so that we will be able to reuse the 2x4's. There are also a few of these studs that have been so damaged by the water leaking in for years that we are going to have to replace them altogether.

We have also been working down in the basement a little. Wow, I like the basement on hot days. ;) It is much cooler down there. We need to get everything set up and usable down in the workshop. We are going to be needing access to all of Jonathan's tools very soon as we start to finish the third floor.

Just a side note:

Yesterday, Jonathan found a dead bat laying on the floor in the doorway to our bedroom. Funny thing is that I had walked passed it several times. I saw something there. It was near a piece of black electrical tape. I hadn't thought too hard about what it was, just thinking it was something to do with that tape. But wow when he told me it was a bat I was a little creeped out. I had been walking passed that barefooted. Ick.. And that brings up the next question... how and when did it die? Our cat likes to 'hunt' things. But as far as we know hasn't actually killed anything. But then did he kill it or did he just bring it down from somewhere? As far as we knew we haven't had any bats for quite a while now.

Day 448

Happy Fourth of July! We are at Mom and Dad's today celebrating with the my Dad's side of the family. We will be home and working again tomorrow. Can't wait to see what we get done. :D

Day 447

This morning, I worked on the tile up on the third floor. The only room left with tile was Zeb's room. In this room the tile was stuck to the floor with some kind of adhesive. This is good and bad news. The good news is that there was no nails and now no nail holes to worry about. But the bad news is the black sticky stuff that is all over the floor. We have not tried to clean any of this off yet. So I am hoping that comes off rather easily, but that will have to wait for another day. We do still need to haul all of the broken tile down to the trash. But without the wood underfloor this isn't all that much rubble. And the best news of all, is that there is only one more room in the entire house that has tile still on it. The Dining Room. I told Jonathan today, that I almost felt like moving all of the boxes and things out of that room, so I could rip up the tile. It would be a great feeling knowing that we had gotten it all out and were ready to start redoing all of the floors.

Day 440 - Day 441

Weekend again. :D

Mom and Dad came down for the weekend to help. The goal this weekend was to get the dumpster full so that we could send it back. We worked on the third floor knocking down more of the plaster, lathe, and insulation.

This picture is taken in the landing room. As you look through the wall you are seeing Zeb's bedroom.

This picture is taken from Zeb's room. Through the wall you are able to see into Ella's room. The door with the window on it is where we lower all of the plaster and rubble in buckets to the ground. It is much less work to lower the buckets than to carry them down three floors.

This picture is taken from Ella's room. On the left you are seeing what is left of the bathroom. Jonathan broke up the big tub. And he and Dad threw the tub and the sink out the door and then we carry all of it to the dumpster. The plaster you see on the bathroom wall is the only bit of plaster left on third floor. There is also still insulation in the ceiling above the bathroom. On the right side of the picture you can just see into Melinda's room. Right now her room is where all of our tools and supplies are kept.

We really wanted to get all of third floor cleaned out. But we just couldn't do it. We were all exhausted by the end of the weekend. So I guess that little bit will have to wait just a while longer. Dad wants to get on to the fun part, wiring, insulating, and putting up drywall.

I also have the tile floor to pry up in Zeb's room. But it is looking really good up there. We are so close to being done with the destruction (at least on third floor) and ready to start making things beautiful again. The goal is to have the third floor finished and ready for us to live in by winter.

Day 437

We were working in the basement. It is nice and cool down there. We are trying to get things clean and organized down in the workshop so that we will actually be able to use it to do some work. We are starting to get to a point where we will be doing some wood work and stuff. We have also been looking into what it will take to make all of the pieces for the porches. So we have been thinking about the shop again. I am looking forward to the time we can stop destroying start building. I also finally got the freeze cleaned out and plugged back in. Now I can start using it again.

Day 436

YAY! I want to thank Judy so much. After talking to us last week she went home and made copies of some of pictures of our house when she lived here back in the 50's. Looking at these pictures was so exciting to me. We actually got to see what our front porch looked like. We also got to see the stairway in the front room. It amazingly looks very much like it did then. Only the wallpaper and the lack of woodwork around the archway (this archway has been walled up). Then she also had pictures of the house after her mother had put on the green shingle/siding and the fire escape stairs. I call the green stuff yucky (now) but back in 1950 something it looked pretty darn good. I guess after 60 years most anything would look yucky

Here is a picture of my beautiful house when Judy's family purchased it. I love all of the details on the porch... and look at the corbels. :D This is another thing that we knew should be there and wondered what they had looked like.

.

Day 434

Happy Father's Day!

Today we spent sometime up on third floor again. Jonathan got the last of the ceiling knocked down. That is always a dirty, messy and tiring job. The worst is being covered in insulation. So we have to wear our blue coveralls. Thankfully it wasn't that warm. After all of the destruction was finished we got a lot of it carried out to the dumpster before we had to stop for the day.

Here is what Zeb's room looked like after we had finished working for the day. Doesn't that fluffy insulation look fun to roll around in? ;)

And this is the 3rd floor landing room. We are getting most everything out of there.

We do still have a few lathe boards on the walls near the ceiling in both the landing room and Zeb's bedroom. But now that most of the insulation is out this won't take too long.

Day 431

Jonathan took the day off of work today so that we could work on the house. The temperature got up to 93 degrees today. So it was a bit on the hot side. Lucky for us that Nebraska is the land of constant wind. With the breeze blowing it didn't feel too bad.

Jonathan lowered many buckets of plaster out the 3rd floor door down to the ground. I took them from there to the dumpster. We got most all of the plaster out of Zeb's future bedroom. :) Now we are ready to knock the plaster off of the ceiling in there and get the insulation out.

But while working today we had an exciting visit. I was down on the ground hauling buckets and a lady walking by our house asked what we were doing. We told her. And she told us that she had moved into our house when she was 5 years old, back in the 1950's. Her mother had owned the building and ran a nursing home in it. When they first started, her family lived on the first floor, but as they got more residents, her mom had turned the third floor into an apartment for their family. When they had lived in the house, the front porch had wrapped around the tower (the east and part of the south side - like we had thought it should). The back (or kitchen porch) had been a screened in porch. She told us about the stairs in the front room and how she had slid down the railing. She also told us that there had been an arched opening from the front room to the dining room. It was her mom who had put on the green asphalt shingle/siding on. The old garage was put there by her mother. There had been one there before. The original one also had a flat roof. She say that as a small child she had walked around on the gutters up on third floor, something that her mother had hated. When they had lived here, the old wood fire escape that we had only seen in pictures was there. And her family had mostly used that as an entrance to their apartment up on 3rd floor. We asked if she had pictures of the house. And she said that she did. She now lives in Lincoln. But she was going to go through her pictures and bring them down next time or make some copies and mail them to us. WOW! What an exciting day. We can't wait to see her pictures and talk to her some more.

Day 427

Another day of destruction...

We went up to third floor and started to knock some more stuff down. We are coming to a place that is really messy, the stairs. Where exactly do you stop? We aren't exactly ready to knock the plaster down in this area on 2nd floor as we are living in these rooms. So I guess we have decided just stop at the edge of the floor (3rd floor). The mess falls down the stairs and piles up by the door. We use some boards to try to keep as much of it out of 2nd floor as possible. The only good thing about this is that once we get everything knocked down there won't be as much mess ever again. :D

This picture was taken from the 3rd floor landing room. From here you can now see through to Zeb's room. We have that wall knocked down. Near the bottom of the picture you can see the railing around the stairs. Much of the plaster and lathe from that wall fell down there. We had to scoop it up into buckets just to clear the path for us to get back downstairs. But the plaster was much better than the insulation from the ceiling above that also fell down into there. Hopefully there won't be too much more falling down there until we get to the stairwell walls.

So here is the update. We have three rooms mostly cleared out. (No insulation in the ceiling, no plaster and lathe on the walls and ceilings) Zeb's room still has insulation and plaster and lathe on the ceiling. We have most of the plaster and lathe off of the walls in there. The other room that we have not yet worked on much is the little bathroom. A couple of the walls are knocked down, but other than that we have not yet started on it. If things go well, we should have all of third floor gutted and cleaned out by the end of June. :D Then on to the fun stuff....making things work...making things better

Day 426

We checked out some more books from the library today. We have been trying to work out the details of what we are going to do with the garden and lawn. Right now we can't do a lot as it might interfere with the work that we are trying to do. But we do want to get a start on it. So we are trying to do a lot of planning.

Day 420 - 425

Jonathan's back is doing much better. It has been getting hot a few of the days this week. We will have to see how this summer goes without a/c. So far there have only been a couple of really uncomfortable days. Since the kids got home we haven't done a lot of work. We have been busy with swimming lessons and gymnastics classes. But hoping to get back into the work again this weekend.

Day 415 - 419

The kids are at Grandpa and Grandma's house. We ended up going home for my Great Aunt's funeral on Monday and we were going to be going back home again on Saturday for a family reunion. So we thought we would give the kids a fun break with Grandpa, Grandma and their cousins. While they were gone, I spent my time carrying down buckets of plaster in between scanning in the rest of my Grandma's photos to get ready for the reunion. I actually got quite a bit done. Jonathan's back got a rest and the kids had a great time. And the family reunion was fun for all of us.

Day 412

Weekend again. We were planning on getting all sorts of things done. But that is not exactly how it turned out. Jonathan got Zeb set up on mowing the lawn. Then we went to get our work clothes on. Jonathan hurt his back putting his shoes on. So bummer, we weren't able to get as much done as we had planned. I did go upstairs and knock down some of the plaster and lathe.

Bee Attack Update

The last two nights Jonathan has donned his bee fighting outfit, climbed out on the roof and attempted to kill as many bees as possible. I stand on the ground outside watching just to make sure that things are going okay. The first night, just after his attack, several disoriented bees found their way into various rooms of the house. We then sprayed them and waited for them to die. Listening from the girls' room (without even having my head against the wall) I could hear swarms of angry bees buzzing loudly in the wall. This was quite disturbing.

Last night Jonathan again prepared for an attack on the bees, I was again watching from the ground. After spraying them some, he used the saw and a crowbar to make a bigger hole in the wall, just a bit lower than the small hole that they are using to get in and out of the house. He then sprayed all around through that hole. Again after his attack there were bees inside the house. This time quite a few more than there was before. I could once again hear the bees buzzing in the wall. We blocked ourselves off in the other part of the house. Over an hour later we were still killing bees in the kitchen, bathroom and landing room. When looking out the bathroom window, we should see hundreds maybe even thousands of bees walking/crawling around on the back porch roof. After seeing this I was sure that I would have nightmares. I was hoping to see how many bees had actually died during the night. But just before we got up this morning it started to rain. I am sure that many of the bees got washed off of the roof. There were quite a few of them still there. All day long Jonathan and I have been hearing bees. Mostly it is in our imagination. There were still bees flying around outside today. I am sure that many of them have died. After another attack or two we might be able to see if we can start getting honey and the hive out of the wall.

Day 409

Today, Jonathan took one more day off of work. We wanted to try to get just a bit more done. We want to get this dumpster filled as soon as possible. We started by lowering all of the stuff from we knocked down yesterday.

Here is the view of the 3rd floor landing room. You can see that most of the ceiling is down. There is just a bit of lathe up near the ceiling.

This is all that is left of the mess in the landing room. Yesterday this mess covered the entire floor. It was about 4 or 5 inches deep.

We got tired of playing with the insulation. So we started to move all of the stuff from the third bedroom (Zeb's future room). There was all kinds of windows, pieces of tin that was left from doing the roof last spring, some stuff that was in the house when we bought it, and the kitchen cupboards.

We got all of the stuff out of the room. And you can see that we have the yucky carpet rolled up against the wall.

This is no longer a kitchen. :) We are down to one working kitchen (2nd floor) and one kitchen in our mind (1st floor). We have now removed 2 kitchens. Jonathan had fun with the BIG sledgehammer getting this one out. Once he had it in pieces, we tossed it out the door and listened as it crashed down three floors below.

Here is the wall after Jonathan had practiced for his role in the upcoming movie. Jonathan will be playing Jackie Chan in UPS workers Feet and Fists. It will be coming out Spring 2011. He did a few side kicks and caused the whole wall to come crashing down.

Here is a view of the same wall from the side.

Day 408

Today was a beautiful day. Right around 70 degrees, and cloudy. :D We started out the day, but cleaning up the remaining plaster and insulation from the third floor tower room. Once all of that was in the dumpster, we moved all of the tools and supplies in there so we would work on the landing room. Last fall, the I had gotten most of the plaster and lathe off of the walls. So we started by removing the trim. Then I started on the remaining lathe on the walls and Jonathan started on the ceiling. But we soon discovered that this was going to be a lot more messy than we had hoped for. There was drywall over the plaster on the ceiling. So instead of just taking the plaster down. Cleaning that up. Then working on the lathe and the insulation and cleaning that up. We chose to reek total destruction. Jonathan just pulled it all down on top of us at once. Now this is how my brother likes to do it. But we tend to keep things separated and less messy. So we had to have are goggles, face masks, overalls, hats and gloves on. Now I actually hate those goggles and face mask. The goggles steam up and you can't see a thing. And the face mask, well, I mostly feel like I am suffocating. But this afternoon, being 75% blind and having a serious breathing problem was a good thing. My eyes felt like they were sweating. We had to take a few breaks just to sit out on the roof to breath for a few minutes. But we got most of the ceiling down. I would love to share a photo. But I didn't have my camera up there. We had a total mess of stuff falling down the stairs. So I didn't want to go out and get it. Then we decided we needed to clean some of this up. So we threw out most of the drywall and the lathe from the ceiling. Then we started to bag up some of the insulation and mess. But we were wading in a mess and quickly running out of energy. So we cleared a path down the stairs and went outside to put everything we had tossed out of the door in the dumpster before it started to rain or we fell asleep stand, which ever was going to happen first.

And all I can say now that I am sitting here at my computer is: Boy do I love being able to breathe.

Day 407

We got our dumpster delivered today. Jonathan lowered all of the bags of insulation from the third floor. And we carried them to the empty dumpster. We also put all of the lathe up on the back porch. Now they are ready for stage two.

Over the last few days, we have been noticing a smell...kind of a dead animal smell. Our first thought was that one of the birds we knew had been on third floor had died. And actually there were 2 dead birds up there. Jonathan got rid of them yesterday. But they were not the cause of the smell. It seemed to be coming from the girls' room. I was not looking forward to finding something dead behind their amoire. So today we moved things around and took a look. We had began wondering if maybe it could be dead bees in the wall. Jonathan had put some poison in the wall about a week ago. There were still a lot of bees flying around, but it seemed like not as many as before. So now we think that the smell is dead bees in the wall. And I am hoping to get it out of there as soon as possible.

So today we also made a trip into Lincoln to get supplies for the Great Bee Attack 2010. Jonathan has been spraying them over and over this afternoon and evening. Tonight we will see if we can get the wall opened up and kill those bees.

Day 405 - 406

Very busy weekend. And on top of that Jonathan took Monday and Tuesday off. So we are having a four day weekend. But not for fun and vacation. :)

We have been having trouble with our lawn mower. So much of the first part of the weekend, was used to getting the mower working and then finally getting the lawn mowed.

The next part of the weekend was a bit more exciting. We were busy working on the third floor. We started pulling down the lathe on the ceiling and bagging up the insulation that was there. Two of the rooms up there were down to the bare lathe ceilings. We had already removed all of the plaster from the ceiling and all of the plaster and lathe from the walls. We had not been looking forward to doing this as the insulation we have found in the walls on 2nd floor was so horrible. It was the powdery, dusty ancient yuck. But lucky for us the little bit of insulation the the ceiling on third floor was much newer. Now playing with that stuff is never fun, but this was not as awful as we were expecting.

By the end of the weekend we had the two south bedroom (both tower rooms) finished. We had just tossed all of the lathe out of the door to the ground. Later we will pick it up, remove the nails and cut the boards to the size we need to burn in the wood stove next winter. All of this will be done in the 1st floor kitchen. So the easiest way to get it all down was just to throw it out the door. There is a huge pile on the ground.

We also filled 16-18 bags full of insulation. We will lower them to the ground out the door tomorrow. (Thanks Andrea for all of the big bags.)

One of the best parts of the day was being able to uncover the underside of our roof. We had seen all of those beautiful boards last year when we put on the new tin roof. The most exciting of all was seeing the underside of the tower.

Wow! We so want to make this a secret room of some sort. It is so amazing. :D

Day 404

This week the kids and I have been working on sorting things down on first floor. We are planning on getting another dumpster. We want to knock down the plaster on the first floor, as well as the rest of it up on 3rd floor. We want to remove the little bit of yucky, old insulation in the ceiling so that we can get everything wired and properly insulated by winter. There was no insulation in the walls on the 3rd floor at all. We were very busy moving things around. But got done what we were hoping. Now it is time for the hard work.

Day 397 - 398

This weekend went by way to quickly. We made an attempt to fix the drain pipe. (Just a temporary fix with plumber's putty. It did not stop the leak completely, but it did help. We also made an attempt at getting rid of the bees. There were a lot of them killed but still have many more there.

Day 395

Well, the inner workings of the toilet decided not to function. :P In other words, the part attaching the handle to the plug broke. So after a day of taking the lid off and manually pulling the plug, I went to get the replacement parts. Not being able to just buy the chain, I had to buy a handle and the plug. Even things that should be easy, never turn out to be quite as easy as you think they should be. First I could not loosen the nut by hand...so off to the basement in hopes of finding a wrench. I found the whole set quite easily. But after bringing them upstairs, I find out that even the largest one is just too small. Now I know we have a larger one. But with us working on so many areas of the house at once you can never tell where a tool might end up. After not finding it in the basement or on 3rd floor I decided to see if I could get it to work with vise grips. Success.. :) It still took just a little bit, but I did get the handle off and was able to easily put the new one in. With the assistance of the girls (they held the float so the toilet would not continually fill with water as I was working) I started working on the plug and chain. It looked as if the new one should slide right on in. But getting the old one out was giving me some problems. It was attached with some pins to the pipe. After some amount of fiddling I got it off and the new one on. Attaching the chain to the handle was easy. Then after a few worrying flushes (the plug would not go down and cover the drain on it's own) I convinced the plug to shut again after the water had drained. YAY! I working toilet again.

Day 391

Well, our weekend plans to work on the plumbing have been changed as Jonathan had to go into work again this weekend. But we did make time to get the swing up for the kids.

Here you can see how high up the branch is that Jonathan is going to be attaching the ropes to. He trimmed a few small branches, put the bolts in, and tied the ropes all from this spot on the ladder. This is the first time we have used our new ladder.

You can see the kids are waiting and watching from one of their favorite play-places ?? They are sitting in the trailer, talking to each other on the walkie talkies.

Now it is time to attach the board to the rope. Ella can't wait to swing. :)

Melinda gets to try out the swing. Jonathan was actually the first one to test it out.

The seat is big enough for both of the girls to get a push from Daddy. :)

Day 386

I went downstairs to work on the floor a bit more today. I didn't get as far as I would have liked, I guess I have a few sore muscles from working this weekend. But we should be able to get the rest of it off yet this week.

Day 385

Jonathan decided to take the day off and work on the kitchen. We are supposed to send the dumpster back by the end of the week, so we wanted to see if we could fill it up. And of course there is always the leaking pipe problem. So we worked on getting the rest of the plaster and lathe off of the walls and then there was the rest of the insulation. Wow that stuff is nasty, mixed in with a 100 years worth of dust. But we did get most of that off and out to the dumpster. As we worked our way down the wall with the drain pipe it was quite easy to see why and where it was leaking. The crack was smaller the higher it was.

Here is our leaking pipe. We are wondering how long it has been leaking. We didn't notice it last spring. But then we weren't working on this area of the house that much.

After we got everything off of the walls, we were looking for what else we could fill the dumpster with. And not wanting to go up to third floor and dig out some more of that insulation, we decided to just work on the yucky tile on the floor. It was a bit hard to get a start on this floor. I guess we were just out of practice. But once we got going it was actually pretty easy. We got about half of the tile off before we stopped for the night. The floor near the south wall (and the pipe) was quite wet. But it isn't all rotten which is again making us wonder how long the pipe has been leaking. But we have found areas of the floor that are not in that good of shape. Once we get all of the yucky tile off and we get a chance to take a good look at all of the floor we will be able to start thinking about what we want to do with the floor and the rest of the room.

Day 384

Today while Jonathan was mowing the lawn, the kids and I worked a bit more on the kitchen. I was lowering buckets of plaster to them and they were taking it over to the dumpster. Then I knocked the plaster off of the last wall and took most of the lathe off of that wall.

This is the north wall of the kitchen. You can see that we have all of the plaster and lathe off of the wall and the ceiling. :D

This is the north-west corner of the room.

This is the south-east corner of the room. There is still plaster on part of the chimney and a little on the wall. This is the wall where there is a water leak so it is kind of icky to work with. But Dad and Jonathan found out where the leak is and and ALL we have to do is replace the drain pile. We are thinking of moving it from the exterior wall to an interior wall, if we think it will work. That way there will be no worry about it freezing in the winter.

And as you can see there is still quite a mess in here. But we are all kind of tired so I think the rest will have to wait until tomorrow or the next day. Once we get all of this out I can start taking the yucky tile off of the floor. Not sure I am really looking forward to that, but I keep telling myself, only three more rooms of yucky tile. Once I finish the kitchen there will only be two. :D

Here is the big pile of lathe. There is still just a bit more to remove in the kitchen. Now we need to take out all of the nails and get this stuff cut and bundled and ready for the wood stove. This stuff burns so easily it is nice to have it ready to start a fire. Hopefully we will have all sorts of bundles ready for winter.

Melinda and I dug up a flower we found in the middle of the yard and replanted it in our Fairy Garden. And Jonathan put up another line on my clothes line. :) Now I can do even more laundry at a time. I tested it out this afternoon, with the two lines, I can have three loads of laundry out drying at the same time.

Here is Melinda going around to water all of our flowers and plants.

Day 383

Mom and Dad came down last night to help us work. So we are busy again this weekend. We had hoped to be digging the bees and the honey out of the wall. But they seem to still be alive and doing well. :( This is not turning out to be the "easy" thing that I had hoped it would be. So instead we continued the work on the first floor kitchen. Jonathan and Dad knocked down the plaster and lathe while Mom and I carried it to the dumpster. When you are just putting the plaster in the dumpster it could take a long time to fill it. We are keeping the lathe to burn in our wood stove next winter. Soon we will be taking all of the nails out of the lathe and cutting them to the right size.

Here is how much that we have put into the dumpster so far. We have one more week to fill the thing up.

The afternoon was spend in town. We went out to lunch and Zeb had a friend's birthday party to go to. But when we got home Dad took out the chainsaw. It was time to cut down a big tree branch so we could get ready to put up a swing for the kids.

Here you can see the tree after we have cut the big branch off that would have been in the way of the swing.

These are all of the leafy branches that we cut up.

The big trunk pieces that need to be split and then we can burn them next winter.

And here is the pile of smaller branches we cut up when we cut off the branch. These will also be good to burn next winter.

Day 381

This is an article I found in the Beatrice paper today. I was quite excited to read this. Jonathan and I had already considered adding our house to the national registry. We missed being part of this by half a block. We are just north of Garfield street.

Treasures of the past

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Posted: Thursday, April 29, 2010 6:00 am | (0) Comments

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Photo by Scott Koperski/Daily Sun staffThe house at 613 N. 11th St. is the only Colonial Revival-style house in the new 11th Street historic district. The style is reflected in the house’s elaborate wrap-around porch and classical columns.

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By Scott Koperski

Daily Sun staff writer

The Gage County Preservation Society held a meeting Tuesday in celebration of two Beatrice streets being declared historic districts.

The districts are both sides of North Seventh Street between Garfield and Washington streets, and both sides of North 11th Street between Garfield and Lincoln streets.

Laureen Riedesel, secretary of Gage County Preservation, said they have been working to get the two districts added to the National Registry of Historic Districts for nearly 12 years.

The process was a lengthy one due to the amount of history that had to be uncovered.

Once enough background information was obtained about the style of the houses and who built them, Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture out of Omaha began to prepare the applications.

The two applications, which were each more than 30 pages long, were turned in to the National Registry in August, 2009.

On Jan. 20, Riedesel was thrilled to hear that both of the applications had been accepted.

“There’s a lot of pride with the realization that it’s not just your imagination that this property is special,” Riedesel said, “Somebody else has looked at it and realized it was special, too.”

There is no cost to become a historic district, and no money is awarded, either.

Jim Spangler, Gage County Tourism Director, believes that having the new historic districts will bring more tourism to Beatrice.

“It is a known fact that towns that have more historic areas draw more people to the community,” Spangler explained. “It just gives us more things people who are interested in historic preservation can enjoy.”

Spangler has a walking tour planned throughout the districts. All but a few houses are occupied, but Spangler would some day like to be able to take tours through the unoccupied buildings.

The new districts could slightly increase property value, but Riedesel doubts that it will see much of a change, other than the fact that people may do a better job of maintaining their “special ”property.

“Ordinarily, sometimes people pay a little bit more attention to the property and may make more of an effort when others realize the house is significant,” Riedesel said.

She also pointed out that while some people will only buy historic properties, others will stay away from historic property because they fear strict rules and regulations with a lot of required upkeep.

There are other historic buildings in Beatrice, but Seventh and 11th streets are the first two districts, according to Riedesel. They are entirely residential.

Total, the two districts have 51 contributing buildings and 12 non-contributing buildings. Seven of the buildings in the districts are garages or other outbuildings.

For a building to be considered contributing, it must have a maximum of one major renovation that does not alter the stylistic integrity of the building.

If the property has two or more major renovations, it may still remain a part of the historic district.

Should the owner of a house now considered contributing decide to renovate it later, it would then be considered non-contributing.

Owners can get advice from the National Registry and other historic groups regarding how to make alterations to a property without losing the contributing status.

Riedesel pointed out that some upgrades are essential to make the house livable.

“The goal is to keep these properties viable,” Riedesel explained. “Nobody wants to live in a house that originally had no plumbing. You have to make compromises. Some of these houses are from the 19th century, but we’re in the 21st.”

The two districts will be named after their respective streets, the North Seventh Street Historic District and the North 11th Street Historic District.

Individual homes will be referred to by the name of the original builder of the house.

The properties build dates range from 1884 to 1959 and significantly vary in architectural style.

Building styles include, Three Queen Annes, three Colonial Revivals, 18 Craftsman style, two contemporary designs, one Ranch-style, Five Vernacular, one Renaissance Revival, one Minimal Traditional, one Shingle, one Folk Victorian, one Gothic Revival, two American Foresquare, six multiple influences and two primary influences.

Properties deemed non-contributing were not designated a specific style.

Two meetings were held with the homeowners to discuss the new historical districts and go over any concerns they had. Riedesel said that only one property owner took convincing to establish he historical districts.

“People were under the impression that being on the National Registry means there’s going to be lots of rules in place,” Riedesel said, “but actually, those kind of rules are ordinarily local ordinances.”

The event to celebrate the new historic districts was held in a historic house at 613 N. 11th St. to celebrate the upcoming preservation month of May.

At the meeting, owners of the houses in the districts were presented with a heritage award for outstanding contribution to historic preservation in Gage County.

While happy to finally get two, Riedesel hopes to eventually see more historic districts pop up in Beatrice.

“The preservation group is very excited to see this happening,” Riedesel said. “We hope that it’s just the start of the establishment of a number of historic districts in Beatrice.