Dumpster Delivery

June 19, 2008 - Tuesday morning Joe and I rolled out of bed around 6:30, I to get ready for my morning with Natalie, and Joe to get ready to meet the dumpster delivery guy. They said they would be dropping it off sometime in the morning and that they would call first. They open at 8 am, so I figured that would be the earliest they would call. I was sitting at the tables in my pjs drinking tea when they called - not at 8 am, but at 6:50 am - to say they were on their way. Just to keep us on our toes I guess. Needless to say it was a bit of a mad dash to get Joe out the door and I was a bit frantic that he would be late and they would turn around and leave us dumpsterless. But everything worked out fine and the truck even made it up our slightly difficult driveway with no problems. So now we have a dumpster. A beautiful sight, isn't it?Joe got straight to work - we have afterall been waiting for this moment for months. First order of business was to turn that window the dumpster is in front of into a door to make for easy tossing. Next he went to town tearing out drywall and insulation, dodging mouse poop at every turn. Seriously. I have never seen so much mouse poop. What it must have been like to live in this house and listen to the mice living in the walls - glad I never had to experience that.

After working for a couple of hours he came home for a lunch break. When I was finished watching Natalie, the two of us headed back to the house for round 2. Here's me kicking butt, if you can see me under there -

And Joe -

We worked inside for a while getting as much insulation and drywall out as we could, but between the mouse poop and the fiberglass floating around, the air quality in that house is basically dreadful. We wore goggles and air masks but we still decided after a while that we needed to get out of that house. So we worked on the outside. Only the one exterior wall has siding on it that we're getting rid of. The other three sides are wood siding and we're keeping all the wood. We're going to use what's good on small projects and we'll burn what's not good since it's silly to pay to have that stuff taken away. But here's what we did to the one side.

After a few more hours, I was itching all over and my eyes and throat hurt (I'm very delicate and sensitive) so we called it a day. Wednesday I was working, but Joe was back at it on his own and decided to start tackling the roof. Basically, as much light, air, and water we can get on the inside of that house, the less toxic it will be for us to clean it out. So here's what he accomplished -

And that's where we're at with the house so far. In other news, we've decided to call a couple foundation contractors this week to talk about our options. Might be easier and faster to have somebody else bust out a foundation so we can get to the framing soon. Or we'll just get some info which will help us make some decisions. But we've decided to abandon our goal of having the plans done by Tuesday, since we really need to think some more about certain things before we move forward. Slow and steady, right?

And now we head into another weekend, task list in hand. No matter what you do, the weeks just keep on flying by. They say time flies when you're having fun. Time flies. Period. Fun or no fun, it flies.