Hello! This week was a bit of a blur, to be honest. Troy and Guy are doing their best to button up all the holes in the roof before winter. They’ve now moved from the west side of the building to the east side. They’ll be back on the west side, but not until a mason comes to do some important brickwork before the fascia is reattached. In the meantime, there are lots of happy green boards where tarps used to be.

Silvio, Mike, and Marlenes have been in the basement, clearing out an incredible amount of stuff and cutting out all the old plumbing lines to prepare for the re-plumbing of the place. There were two more truck and trailer loads of metal from down there for Ron to take to the scrapyard. Talk about a transformation!

Mike discovered a fun water feature this week! There is a small working bathroom under the main staircase; it’s the only place in the main house that still has water. When he turned the sink on, dirty water started shooting out of the washing machine hookup in the old kitchen! A short time later, the nearby radiator collapsed, as if shocked by the whole affair! Just kidding. The radiator passed out because it was leaning very hard thanks to the caved in floor, and the pipe it was connected to was cut. And it was very drunk. (kidding again!)

Dom’s been going great guns, getting all the trash and furniture out of the second floor. Amazing, right?!

The sheer amount of furniture now on the first floor is nearly overwhelming. My job is to figure out what to do with it! First step was to inventory it all with Ethan yesterday. We pulled out & photographed each piece, sorting which pieces we might want for ourselves versus what we want to get rid of. I’ve left a message with a local used furniture store, and I’m hoping to hear from them today. In my dreams, they come, hand me some money, and make it all vanish. Fingers crossed my dream will come true! In the meantime, at least we managed to give away all 33 school desk/chair combos! Two wonderful women came and fit them all in SUVs for use in their preschool and after school programs. That’s so awesome! And today the wonderful and talented Bernie came and helped us dismantle the already disassembled baby grand piano. He is going to use quite a bit of it for awesome upcycled woodworking projects. Hooray! Thank you Bernie! Between those two things alone, a third of the parlor has been cleared. Whew!

Friday was fun, if your idea of fun is seeing all the places water gets in your house when it pours outside. (you don’t think that’s fun? weird!) There was a leak in every single room along the front of the house, including the entryway covered by a porch. Fortunately, it all appears to be related to the roof and dormer issues that are already being addressed, so there were no real additional issues added.

Once it stopped raining, I put on my trusty protective gear and headed into the second floor master bedroom, one of the few rooms where a drop ceiling and paneling was added. The drop ceiling was sagging something fierce, and the smell of mold is the worst in this room. I took my step stool and my hive tool and started pulling. It didn’t take much for the ceiling to come down, soggy insulation and all. And then I took most of the next layer of 60s wet ceiling tiles off too, discovering some fascinating fungi & mold up there. It was sweet that someone had put a “SMILE — JESUS LOVES YOU” mini booklet up there, as if they anticipated that whoever would be taking this down would be questioning the life decisions that brought them to this point and looking for direction (they’re not entirely wrong, haha!) There are two more drop ceilings and a whole lotta paneling and carpet to dispose of from the second floor, but at least the grossest part is done.

The absolute best thing about this week is after all the gross jobs, we can just hop right in the shower where we have unlimited hot water! I even soaked in a nice epsom salt bath on Saturday. Hot water makes it alllll better.

Here are some numbers so far:

10 Loads to dump

4 Loads to scrap yard

10 Loads of scrap wood

79 Pieces of furniture (art and mirrors not included)

See you next week! Unless you want some furniture? If you want furniture, come see me! ;)