Yardwork, Fish House, Carpet

This past weekend was all yard work! The weather was still great so we figured we'd better take advantage now before the snow flies.

Mom, Brian, Chris and Mike all showed up. We trimmed several trees, kept the fire burning and enjoyed everyone’s company. It’s amazing how great the yard looks just getting some of the trees trimmed up. Their branches were all in our house’s business.

They won’t do the job justice, but here are a few pics from the weekend:

Rocky was so funny during lunch. I never thought a dog could sit so still when food is held in front of their faces.

You might be thinking, "Oh, good for you kids. You trimmed a couple trees. Welcome to the World of Homeownership."

Well I say to you, then, "Join our club, silly little homeowner. We dare you to create a brush pile larger than ours!" Only about 2/3 of the pile is actually showing in this picture, and it was as wide as it was long.

So there. Our brushpile wins.

Anyone up for a bonfire? We started already, but we'll have plenty to burn this winter!

After everyone left on Saturday, we stoked up the fire and spent some time getting to know our neighbors, Dave and Camilla. It was great to meet some neighbors who have a lot of the same interests as us! It will be great having them in the neighborhood.

Once the neighbors turned in for the night, we decided it would be foolish to drive 20 minutes home just to turn around and come back the next morning. With this in mind, we stayed in a fish house on the property! Greg's buddy, Mark, brought it over for us to use. Not too shabby! I told Greg it reminded me of Girl Scout camp without the singing contests.

Sunday did not bring as enjoyable of work for either of us. We were both pretty tired and run down. I stayed in the house and pulled up all the carpet (you read that right: ALL of the carpet), while Greg converted the old chicken coop into storage space. Some of those 32 doors came in handy, for now they are shelving. We figured there was a good reason out there to have so many doors.

Great Weather Does Not Call for Housework

We took advantage of the amazing weather this last weekend and have done some work outside. We needed this time to brainstorm some ideas for what we really wanted to do on the guest house, considering the time frame we have to work with.

Gwen, Randy and the kids stopped out to help us with our tasks. Thanks to Marisa, Erika, Kiersten and Ian for helping us make an awesome fire pit!

Gwen and I spent the time pulling nails out of all the interior 2x4s. We plan to salvage these and utilize them in either the guest house or the main house. It would have been foolish to throw all those boards away!

Randy and Greg worked on cutting up all of the scrap wood, as well as deconstructing all of the cabinets, etc.

For a 2400 square foot home, you’d be amazed at the amount of “stuff” this house had! We counted 32 interior doors. That’s right – 32. Where were all of these rooms??

Guest House Pre-Demo

Since most of the upcoming work will be on our guest house until we move in, I thought it was only right to post some photos before we started the project.

These were taken on a visit earlier this summer, before it was even guaranteed that we had the place, so NOTHING had been done yet. Mom and Brian came along on that day, too.

Guest House exterior - you can see how close to the brown pole shed the structure is. Keep this in mind for future developments.

Back corner of the home. Again, the pole shed is on the right side of the photo.

This photo is a good indicator of how small the structure is. To take this picture, I was literally straddling the threshold of the entry door (southwest corner). Yep. That's all the space. A living area, kitchen and a bathroom. No closet even!

Another shot of our spacious living area, taken from the southeast corner.

Don't let this photo fool you. The kitchen is just as tiny as the rest of the house! Taken from the living room/kitchen threshold.

And last, but certainly not least, the bathroom. This was the best angle I could get, standing in the kitchen/bathroom threshold. The bathroom entry is right next to the stove in the previous photo. To the right of this photo is the tiny 32x32 shower stall.

In the upcoming weeks you will be seeing some crazy developments with this structure. I promise!

Two Houses. Both Gutted. Yup.

Work continued into the evening on the guest house. We had a few people stay around to assist us in our continued endeavor. After the hard work put in on the main house earlier, we thought we had it made. “This is just a small project,” we all told ourselves. Who were we kidding?!

Prior to being a guest house, the structure was a single car garage. The prior owners had finished off the garage with plywood, rather than sheet rock. Not only did they screw the plywood down, but they caulked over all of the screws and then painted over the caulking so it was next to impossible to locate the screws. Stripping one wall of four plywood panels took over two hours.

Considering we didn't start this project until 8:00 P.M. should speak for itself.

Our thanks to Cindy, Tom, Carmen, Chris and Rocky for sticking around and helping us out!

Greg came back later on this past week to finish the gutting process:

Opening up the space of both the main house and the guest house will really help us to visualize what we want to do with the space. We’ve got lots of ideas and have a few weeks to make some big decisions and get moving on the guest house.

Then it’s on to the main house!

Guest House Sneak Peak

Not much time to blog right now (I am supposed to be packing...shhh don't tell Greg!), but I thought you may enjoy a sneak peak at our guest house progress.

Not only was Rocky (Chris' dog) some good entertainment while we worked last weekend, he decided to pitch in as well.

Project Managers of the world take note - hiring a dog onto your crew increases your productivity ten-fold:

Good dog.

"Excuse me, Sir, but dare I say I believe you may have just kicked my wall in."

This phrase could have been heard repeatedly throughout the day this past Saturday at the Prokott residence........if we were snooty, tired, old British chaps!


But British chaps we are not, and as such, many a wall were kicked, pile driven, punched, smashed, and hammered to the ground. The brave men and women that joined us came armed and ready with whatever they could round up; whether it be hammers, power tools or a dog name Rocky.


Combined we put in a total of 122 hours of labor. This was a feat that would have taken Greg and I a whopping 3.35 work weeks to complete. For this we want to thank those of you who came out to help us. We couldn't have done it without you. We worked hard, but we had a good time doing it. The two cases of beer we went through is proof-positive.


First and foremost, it's very important that I point out that I have officially committed to the task at hand as of last Saturday. Not only am I "along for the ride," but I have all chips in.

Why?

Because I'm the proud owner of a toolbelt.

That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen, a genuine leather-with-pockets-galore toolbelt. I wore it with pride the entire day, even after Greg advised that it doesn't count if I'm only hanging my hammer on it.

But I digress. The day was a complete success. We started with the honorary first hole in the wall (notice: I wasn't trusted to wield a true sledge hammer! A regular hammer will just have to do):

Well, that was fun. On to the work.
It was amazing how many layers these people had on their walls and on their floors! In one area I counted 4 wall layers and 3 floor layers. Each one was uglier than the next!
Here is a pic of the wallpaper we found after pulling off the wood paneling in the living room:

Note to the previous homeowner: Nice job measuring out your wood-paneling using black spray paint. Stay classy.

The day progressed layer by layer, wall by wall. It seemed the work would never end. But progress was made the walls surely came down. Check out the progress!

No demolition party would be complete without a few breaks and some brewskis.

We couldn't immediately part with the beautiful nature scene that was once a part of what used to be the master bedroom, so we propped it up in the living room for a while.

What a joke.

Upstairs completed:

Of course, we had to keep the stove!

On to the basement. The basement was also completely finished. They apparently rented it out. It was interesting to hear stories about the previous homeowners. One thing we consistently heard from our neighbors was that they were both rather "sickly" people. After pulling the cabinets in the basement kitchen, it's no wonder! Check out all that mold!

More basement progress:

While we had no ceremony, it was rather ceremonious demolishing the mom-sized shower:

You can see where the shower used to be in the last photo. The (non-functioning) toilet is all that remains.

I think we did pretty good for a single day's work. We are now the proud owners of an empty shell of a house!

Next up is the guest house. This will be priority #1 from here on out until we move in. It will need to be completely ready before the end of November since that is when our lease is up.

Stay tuned!

Last-Minute Visit

What the heck. We just got married at the end of August and it's already OCTOBER? Where did September go?

Well, nonetheless, it's been a busy month. We're heading off for a nice little vacation with some wonderful friends on Saturday, so here's our update for the upcoming week.

Last night we decided to take a jaunt out to the property to check things out for the first time since we signed on the 153 dotted lines. Wow. We have a LOT of work to do! This comes as no surprise to me, of course, but to see it in front of you is something else.

There is a lot of wasted space in this home, as you'll see in future posts. There really isn't any room in the house that is of an appropriate size in our minds.

We perused our options for demolition and agreed that it all has to go. All of it.

Even this Mom-sized shower and lovely wallpaper portrait deal:

We're hosting a demolition party in a few weeks. If you have a tool for smashing things (industry term, for those non-carpenters out there. Don't worry. A good month reading my blog and you'll be all on the up and up on industry lingo.), you are invited to come destroy walls, staircases, floors, old nasty bathtubs, just about whatever your hearts desire. Bring your smashing tool and get to work!

To round out our first visit, we were delighted to meet one of the neighbors. Mary, the charming neighborhood guard of sorts, sauntered on over to greet us. She and Greg met once before when he was out at the property just before the wedding. She couldn't wait to give us both great big hugs and tell us how thrilled the neighborhood is that we got the property. Apparently, we were all the rage in our little neighborhood.

So we'll put our adventure on hold for a short bit, but we'll be back soon enough.

Smashy things and all.