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!