Mom and I headed over to the house the other day and got everything swept and cleaned out from our demo and renovation of the previous days and weekend. I’m going over there about every night now and getting something (anything) done after work that I can. I can’t help it – I’m already feeling the squeeze and feel behind (though we aren’t behind). So Joe and I are the demolition crew and mom and I are the cleanup crew lol. The dumpster is full and we’re waiting for it to be emptied. I started in on my grandparents’ old bedroom, pulled down the paneling and added it to our “to be burned” pile. Anyone need any paneling or scrap wood or lath? We have a lot… Joe and I headed to the house on Saturday morning of Easter weekend – we got there early knowing that Sunday we would be going to Easter dinner. Losing Sunday to the holiday is probably why I’m feeling anxious, we lost Sunday the weekend before too and I’m starting to chew my nails off. I need to calm down – even when we do get two full days on the weekends we’re always hurting pretty bad on Sunday anyway and just don’t move as fast. And my nights working on the house alone after work are starting to take their toll on me.

We got a lot done and I need to learn to focus on progress and not what is left to do. We are only human and we are really accomplishing a lot. My grandparents’ bedroom evaporated beneath Joe and his sledge hammer that he’s calling Thor. I call my big (and favorite) hammer Max so I don’t find naming tools odd at all. It’s certainly easier to call, “Grab me Thor!” across the room then yelling, “Grab me the sledge hammer… no the other sledge hammer… no the big 8 pound sledge hammer!” across the room. With the wall and closets down the bedroom is showing just how big it will be and I am very pleased. With the wall down we’re also seeing now just how much the floor was built up and I’ve decided to simply leave it – a step up into the bedroom does not bother me at all. And then Joe brought the ceiling down all the while I was hauling shit to either the wood pile or the dumpster pile. It was pretty awesome to see that the dropped ceiling was absolutely useless and the vaulted ceiling/roof is in great shape and will stay vaulted. It makes the bedroom feel so big! This will be Our guest room. As always I uploaded a lot more photos to the gallery if you want to see more. Funny how with the bedroom gone it feels like a big wrap around screened-in-porch again as though we rolled it back 40 years to before my grandparents’ enclosed it to make the bedroom.

We also started in on the upstairs Sunday morning before heading to Easter dinner with my family. (It was wonderful to get away and see everyone – and the weather was glorious.) Annoyingly the weather on Saturday sucked though and was just too windy for us to burn anything. We officially have a wood pile half the height of the house waiting to be burned. (don’t freak out – we’re extremely careful with when and what we burn). Next is to finish gutting the upstairs, take out the drop ceiling and finish gutting theentry way and then attack the wood shed. Mom and I are heading over there to shovel out the bedroom and continue work on the upstairs tonight. Interesting how Joe comes over and works for a few hours and it sure does feel like progress but with any type of demolition the clean up takes twice as long and is far more arduous for me.