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.