Murphy’s Law

As in most any endeavor that is worth while, Murphy’s Law always applies to construction. We planned to work two long days straight over this beautiful memorial day weekend. However, half way through the day Sunday our generator started to bog down. It made for a very tedious last half of the day. We had to stop work over and over to attend to the generator and keep it running for long enough to build up air pressure in the compressor. As Derek shouted measurements for me to cut, our perfect workflow became stumbled and then halted after about half of the master bedroom was framed in.

The kids and I did manage to finish cleaning up the front yard including taking a sledge hammer to the massive radiator. We had to break out the whole middle in order to have manageable pieces to place onto the trailer. There’s a small video here. And first thing Sunday morning we stacked a truck and trailer full of logs and kindling behind the garage.

Monday morning was also a bit of a bust. My grandmother passed away last year and we have been trying to get her house ready to hit the market. Our whole family feels like we are losing a limb seeing it go. But life goes on.

As always when someone passes people fight over some belongings while there are always things that don’t get claimed in the house. My mother just couldn’t let any of it go, so guess where it ends up? You know, because we have plenty of space. This morning my younger brother and dad both pulled up in large, covered trailers full of stuff. Not necessarily items or belongings, just stuff. All my brothers were there to help move everything into the house that was staying. Some hush hush, don’t tell mom stuff made it into the back of my oldest brother’s truck to be donated, and some back into my dad’s trailer to go back to their house or business building.

My second oldest brother had to come back with his tools to help us after we purchased a spark plug for our generator. Our efforts are all for naught. It still didn’t properly run. So back to the stores to buy a new one. We will buy a new carburetor for the old one and get it running later, but we just need to keep moving at this point.

After getting up and running again with power and pressure we were back at it. Derek shouting measurements, me cutting and him placing each board until we finally ran out of reclaimed boards large enough to use. We have many half pieces to still use but our next step is purchasing some bundles of 2x4s in order to keep going. We hope you enjoy our progress video. If you want to see more, keep reading the blog or just check out the rest on our YouTube channel.

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Warrick the Vampire Slayer

He looks up to Buffy, wants to be Angel, secretly envies Petyr and has a mission all his own. Our little Taika Waititi fan has been scheming his vampire attacks. This kid has been feverishly sharpening his stakes and strategically placing them throughout the renovation so that he’s ready for every Viago, Vladislav, Deacon and Nick. He practices impaling and slashing and even defensive rolls. Many people told us this house was haunted, but little did we know we needed to prepare for a vampiric infestation. Thank goodness we have a 5 year old that will save the day.

A slow start.

We don’t have much of the supplies at the house yet in order to get moving, but I decided to grab the boys and do some work in the yard since Derek is currently indisposed. We stopped at the IFA that is about a block from the house, grabbed a couple new spade shovels, gloves and a hand tool. We dug up the awful noxious succulents, myrtle spurge, along with the sweet pea. We then decided to dig up the horrible railroad tie border.

After pulling out the giant pile of sweet pea I found the old downspout 90 that fell off. I was cleaning it out with my, thankfully gloved hand, when I spotted a mommy black widow and her giant egg sack. We found her a quiet spot off to the side of the house, nowhere near a window (I’m not sure that really matters). It’s not that i felt i needed to spare her life more than it’s about not having to hear that “pop” when you squash one. It gives me the chills just thinking about it.

We will just have to learn how to cohabitate, because I’m not going to kill her and hopefully she feels the same. We are invading her space after all.

We posted a short little video about cleaning up the front yard and finding our friend.

After finishing the front yard we started clearing out the space behind the garage. I bet I removed over 100 fiberglass tent poles. Who collects tent poles? Seriously. Anyway, we were able to get it spiffied up and ready for stacking the wood that we will need in our two wood stoves during the winters. We stacked a little of the wood we recently received from our lovely friends’ home, but there is much more to get to fill that space including the wood from my grandparents home. I can’t let a single thing my grandfather did go to waste. He will keep us warm for at least one winter.

Derek was able to come by later in the day after working his other two jobs. He finished pulling up oak flooring upstairs and finished the tedious job of removing all the nails as well. He will be saving the oak to line the walls of his music studio.

All in all it was a very successful day. We will be getting to the real renovation next week after Derek is done working on his clients’ homes.

Best birthday present EVER!

For my birthday this year we finally were able to obtain our permits from Price City. What a chore that was! Now we can finally start working and spending every penny giving Bertha the beautiful facelift she has been longing for.

Today however, Derek is working feverishly to button up some other jobs renovating another house and business for some of his clients. And I decided that we needed to do some cheap advertising for the blog so I went down and painted the front window.

Hopefully this will bring some more traffic to the page. I will be going back with the boys after a quick lunch to get rid of those noxious weeds in the front yard and clear out the back yard. Keep your eyes peeled for another post tonight or tomorrow.

Seeing this permit in the front door window warms my heart more than you know! It’s one step closer to getting us out of our small Helper home.

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