Month: March 2018

I’ve had a busy week. Don told me last Sunday that he wanted me to remove all the paneling and the rest of the carpet. He didn’t think I’d get it all done, but that was simply not an option.

So on Monday I started by taking all the electrical boxes and other things off the interior wall. Fortunately the boxes didn’t have to come off the exterior walls, because the paneling just went around them. Then I pulled off the trim strip between the bottom 8 foot piece and the top 2 foot piece. Then I was ready to begin yanking paneling off the wall. It actually went pretty well. Once I broke the edge loose and got a good hold on it, I could pull the piece off without breaking any more nails loose. I got the interior wall done by lunch time. It was definitely hard work, but not time-consuming. After lunch I started on the east wall, because Don had already done the north wall. I finished the south wall except for the corner pieces that I couldn’t get loose.

Then came the ladder work. I had to first remove the top trim strip, which was a lot like the baseboard strip. Then I could loosen the 2 foot section and pull it off. But I was pulling it off from 3 steps up the ladder, so my stability was not as good as when I was on the floor. I managed to do it without getting hurt and went from the center of the interior wall to about the center of the east wall before I was too exhausted to do any more. I’d been there from about 10:00 until 1:20.

On Tuesday I got right to work finishing the upper sections the rest of the way around. Those pieces were more difficult to get off, particularly on the south wall and the interior wall. I was able to get all the paneling off except one upper corner piece and one long corner piece. Then I had to clean up, putting all the pieces of paneling in the trailer. I loaded paneling on the AV cart and wheeled them to the door, then heaved them into the trailer. The trailer was full to the top by the time I was finished. Then I swept up and everything looked great.

I started removing the carpeting that had been under the shelves in the back of the building. I got the carpet all up and the backing removed on the interior wall and the north wall before going home.

On Wednesday, I returned and made short work of the rest of the backing. I then pulled up the carpet in the area behind the counter and scraped up all that backing. That came up a lot more easily. Then I did the final sweeping up. I’d been avoiding a section where raccoon poop had fallen through a hole in the top plate in the interior wall, so I carefully swept around that. The rest of the place was well swept, though, and the counters were straightened and wiped off before I headed for home.

Yesterday when Don came back, he cleaned up the toxic poop area and we loaded a few more things on the trailer and took it all to the disposal place right in Bristol. At first they said they couldn’t take that kind of stuff, but then the guy looked at it and said it would be fine. So we were able to dispose of all that stuff for $27!

Dad worked Sunday through Tuesday, then slept most of Wednesday because he has been fighting a cold, so we didn’t spend a lot of time at the property until yesterday and today. Even those two days, we’ve only been there from about 9:30 or 10:00 until 1:15 or so. We bring our lunch, so we take a break for that.

We finally finished removing the last of the shelving on the right side today. We removed the shelving in the “clean room” by the shower the other day and used the lumber to make the rest of the raised beds for the garden. We even had enough to make a 14 foot long box to put in front of the house for the marigolds. So that room is totally emptied and swept out. It just needs to be scrubbed and we can paint it and then move stuff into it whenever we want. It has a door on it, so will be the place we put stuff we don’t want to get terribly dusty during the summer. And come colder weather, it might also be the place we sleep. We’ll see how things are going by then. I hope to have the new master bedroom done, but you never can tell. At least we have a backup plan if we don’t get that far by cold weather.

The shelving on the right side took a long time because we either had to pull nails or cut off the nails with the Sawzall, which is what we did today. Then we moved all the pieces either to a pile to use for future shelving on the left side or, in the case of the smaller pieces, to the burning pile, which is getting really big!

We also worked a little on the shed, removing some flooring and seeing if the plywood from a couple of the shelves would work as a replacement floor, which it does. We still have to nail that down, because getting it fit in the space turned out to be a little tricky. We also got the door on the shed yesterday, so we can now close that up, although it still isn’t watertight because of some metal missing alongside the door and several holes in the walls.

I’ve forgotten to keep this update current. So where are we now?

First of all, we’ve decided to try to fix up the shed to live in during the warm months as we remodel. So that meant cleaning everything out of the shed, which we have done. We checked the state of the floors and walls and know what repairs need to be made before the end of July. The first thing we want to do, though, is get the exterior painted, and we can’t do that until we power wash it, and we STILL DO NOT HAVE WATER!

Okay, there is technically water to the property, but the plumber hasn’t connected the water to the house, yet.

We’ve been working on setting up the work shop on the left side. There were quite a few shelves made from particle board set on blocks in the shed, and I moved all the blocks inside the workshop and used other boards to make lots of shelves. We have the tools and everything set up in that area and it makes a very nice work space.

We’ve also removed most of the shelving from the right side. There was a lot and much of it was nailed, not screwed, to the walls. It is a tedious process removing it, but we have the left wall done and the back wall done, so all we have to do is the right wall. We also have everything else removed from the rest of the walls, including the other kinds of shelving that were held up by various brackets. We have left the counter and lower shelves where they are for the time being, partly because there is a sink there (if we ever get water.)

Today we made the first four raised beds for the garden. We used lumber from shelving. We still have five more to make, but four will be enough to get the important early stuff in the early part of April. We also planned where the squash and flowers will go (on the rise to the east of the house, along the property line with the neighbors.) There is plenty of room there and it looks like it will get plenty of sun after about 10:00 a.m.

I guess I didn’t mention that we painted the front of the house. That was quite a while ago. It looks really nice. We also taped off where the window will go in the master bedroom. We think we are going to put in a 4′ by 4′ slide-by right in the center of the back wall.