Word verification

Sorry peeps...I had to add word verification, as I keep getting all of this ^&*( blog spam whenever I post. I realize it's an extra step, but please don't let it slow you down from posting comments. I love them!

These are the two walnuts that belong to my neighbors (translation: I can't cut them down). But I did cut them back so they aren't all over my yard (darn walnuts all over the place) and the branches aren't all over my roof. 

While I was away, the tree man took out 3 trees, including the one in FRONT of the garage. Nice. Now to just get the stumps out of there.... 

I was in OC last week, and luckily for me, my friend Bill and his wife Liz had their baby just in time for me to crash (I mean visit). His name is Conner. Isn't he beautiful? And look how perceptive, he is already (at 8 days) sticking his tongue out at me. 

This is a tree that was at the corner of the garage. It was grown over the ground so you couldn't see much underneath it. We knew there was some trash there, so Dad started cutting away branches so he could get to the trash (the tree is being removed and the stump dug out). When he started digging he found the huge pile of rocks (in the background) and an old Ford transmission (in the foreground) along with trash and a variety of metal crap. Apparently this is where Fred (prior owner) threw everything he didn't want anymore.) :) 

Sometimes you have trees growing in 1 foot from your house, that you have to pull out with a chain and your Dad's truck. Here are 3 of them, roots and all..... 

Sometimes in a bedroom, they put down weird thin black padding, that is glued to the floor. Which then of course needs to be scraped. (We didn't scrap enough on the wallpaper??) 

So this is what happens when you pull out old plaster. You get piles of rubble, just a fraction of which is lath, which you can see piled here. 

As you can see, the wall had a bunch of holes in it, so Dad started cutting it out to fit in new drywall. However, the wall "exploded" all over him.... (he made it) 

Once the floor was pulled out....wood...nice. 

This is bathroom #1. More linoleum, 2 layers I think. The plumber took all of the fixtures, so we could get to the floor and then we're going to install a new shower/tub stall.
 

This is a drain pipe. I wonder why the sink drained slow?? Hhhmmm...could it be because it had 40 YEARS OF GUNK IN IT? Bleh. Amazing it worked at all.... 

Contractor Time

So I have begun contractor time. The plumber was out for 2+ days, but now I have good hot water pressure in all taps but one. Gotta have him back out. Lucky Logan, the plumber man. Meanwhile, after I removed all of the ba-gillion cabinets in bath #1, I realized there is a pipe coming out of the wall on an angle going into another wall, only shows about 6-8” and guess what? it’s leaking. And no wonder, there is a big hole in the bottom of the pipe. Eek. Hello Mr. Plummber, come on out to visit again. This of course does not count having them come back out to install and fix all of the fixtures, once I have walls. J

The electrician has been in one attic and all 3 of the crawl spaces under the house. Fred, the old guy that owned the place before me, got some electrical work done, but his buddy didn’t do any of the hard stuff. So that is what we are working on. Getting all the old knob and tube wiring out and installing 3-way connductors. Nifty. Who knew I would think this sort of stuff was great, just a mere 3 months ago.

I have help coming tomorrow to work on ripping out more walls and ceilings.

Next week, hopefully is drywalling all of the naked walls.

I have started buying light fixtures, which is fun. I now visit Home Depot and Lowes every other day. No kidding.

It’s getting there. Thanks for staying tuned. xo

Oh yea, this is what I look like after pulling down ceiling for half a day. I know I'm pretty, you don't have to tell me.  

This is what Dad looks like after a half day of pulling down plaster ceiling. 

Jerome. That guy. Playing in the plaster rubble. 

More of the ceiling pullout. I am buying one of these 6' scaffolding today. Who knew I would own my own scaffolding? Neat.
 

So last Sunday, we started tearing out the ceiling, you remember, the one that had the big flippin' hole in it. Turns out plaster - ick. Very heavy, messy and hard to bag up to get rid of. Besides the fact that plaster is held up with wood slates, called lathe that are full of nails and bite you when you grab them and try to bundle them up.  

Sometimes this is what it looks like behind your kitchen sink. Eek. This is right beneath the Good and Plenty wallpaper. 

My little L.C. loves to roll in the dirt. In this picture, the only thing that wasn't dirty gray was a little circle on her face. But of course she crawled under Murray, hence the undercarriage in the picture. 

This is from early July, when we arrived in Michigan. This is my cute little Pop. (I don't think these pics ever got posted to the Road Trip blog, so I thought I would add a few here.) 

Sometimes we put a big cow on the top of a drive-thru store, that we then name the Cairy Dairy, but everyone in town just calls The Cow. Funny shit huh? 

Sidetrack is my favorite little bar, it lives in Depot Town. (Winner of one of the best burgers in the US. (Not that I eat burgers.)) 

Depot Town is a historic area of town, close to where Murray is parked. 

One of the wallpaper layers in the kitchen says it best, "good (times) & plenty (or work)!" 

This is Dining room #2, this is what it looks like when the wallpaper is gone, all 3 layers in this room. 

Living room #2, on the left is layer 2 of wallpaper, on the right are layers 2-4