No turning back

Yesterday we borrowed a farm pick-up to help Brenda move the rest of her things to town. We took one more load of scrap to town, including a washer, dryer and grill — 640 pounds in all. That scrap yard creeps me out.

This afternoon we spent 4 hours beginning deconstruction. We want to get as much torn out of the house as possible by ourselves before brining in more help. We aren't yet sure whether we'll gut completely, so we're only doing things that we know for sure need to come out. The biggest project we took on today was beginning to remove the downstairs bathroom. We have the paneling off and the sink and toilet out. Next we'll remove the drywall, stud walls and bathtub.

We did a lot of little things today, such as removing outlet covers, nails from walls and wallpaper inside kitchen cupboards. I tore out the mudroom sink and broke down its cabinet. We haven't done anything upstairs yet.

Addy was a huge help today. She removed all the metal kick plates off the stairs, tore away most of the wall covering in the kitchen and tore up a lot of vinyl off the living room floor (it had been hiding under the carpet). She took on other tasks, too, and worked really hard. We are proud of her and she was proud of herself.

Dori started the afternoon helping us. We got the kitchen wall covering loosened so she could help pull it off. The problem was that she kept taking off her shoes, then even her socks. There are too many nails and other things around for that to be safe, so we're glad that Grandpa was willing to come and get her.

Waiting for bids
This week we gave tours of the house to four carpenters. We went through our layouts and asked for bids to do the work. We expect each will take at least a week to calculate their costs and let us know. We're anxious to know the projected bottom line, of course. We're hoping their costs to subcontract all but the electrical from a gutted house on up will be within our budget. If so, we'll be ready to go.