There now…let’s take a breath! With the demo of the second floor and bump out, it was time to do some clean up. The demo was exciting, don’t get me wrong, but after the crane truck left and the contractors went home, we were looking at a HUGE mess! So today the crew from Gehrke Inc. out of Eldora, IA was here to clean up the mess. They are a local tiling and excavating company. They also showed up with…
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had time to relax and unwind during the Christmas break. We enjoyed time in Nebraska with my parents and were thankful for good traveling weather both ways. Speaking of great weather…we have really lucked out with some nice weather this past month. It’s enabled us to do some tree demo work to get ready for this spring when the second floor will be coming down. Ok, we won’t be doing any of the demo…
As we had left off of the last post, we had taken a long shot approach and found a local farmer that was willing to take down the machine shed. After more than a year of cleaning out and cleaning out and cleaning out…we actually get to do some demo work! We cannot begin to explain how excited we were to see something done other than shoveling raccoon infested trash into a dump trailer. After a bit of logistics, the…
If you love a blog post with lots of pictures, you’re going to love this post! After our move, getting the machine shed cleaned out, so it could be taken down, was our top priority. We were getting so close to getting it totally cleaned out. We decided that the shelves in the back of the shed that go floor to ceiling were up next for deconstruction. Luckily Chris doesn’t have a problem with heights! Each shelf was constructed with…
Meet Blue..Big Blue. Big Blue is the newest addition to our remodel project. It is a full-size, 8′ by 40′ shipping container. Blue has most likely made thousands of trips across the ocean. And now it sits contently in our backyard. So how did this happen? We knew we needed a secure place to put all our remodel/construction stuff after the machine shed gets taken down. And of course, when construction begins on the house, everything will need to be…
Pulling. Wire. Pulling. Wire. Next up on the list of oh-so-dreaded tasks was pulling wire. Remember the previous tasks: Cleaning out all the junk on the first floor Vacuuming the first floor Basement clean-up Basement vacuuming As we’ve worked on those 4 projects, we’ve also been trying to tame the machine shed and the mess that is outside. It seems like these tasks take us right up to exhaustion just as we finish the task. But forge ahead we must!…
Here at A Walk in the Weeds, we’ve been in hibernation mode lately. The fall brought great progress on our house remodel, but as the season turned to winter and the holidays arrived, time spent working on the house was nonexistent. I mean, bake cookies in my warm house or pull wire in sub-zero temps. Uumm, the cookies won. Now that a January thaw has brought some life back into us, it’s time to come out of hibernation. Just a…
The weather has started to cool down and the days are getting shorter. I thought it would be a good time to talk a little about the basement and the grossness that awaits us down there. First off, the basement has zero windows. Yes, you read that right, ZERO. No egress windows, no small windows…3,000 square feet in the basement and no windows! It’s pretty creepy when you look down the steps and there is no light AT ALL. Luckily,…
Today we moved our efforts back inside to the first floor. Now that we’ve gotten most of the first floor cleared, it was time to make it look good. It was time to vacuum! There are so many little crevices. Every tiny nook and cranny has dust in it! But unlike when I clean at home, this will stay clean for longer than 10 minutes! (at least until we start the remodel process) Let the vacuuming begin! I started on…
We’re back at work in the machine shed. We know that this project is not a sprint…it’s more like a marathon. One weekend we work in the machine shed, the next weekend might be inside work or even outside work. It helps to break up the overwhelmingness (I know, that’s not a word!) of working on one section of this project for too long. Coming back to work on the machine shed felt better this time around. We were definitely…