Week 9 - November 28th to December 4th
Tuesday November 28thThe bin arrives! This was very exciting. (what has my life been reduced to!!)
Andreas was on hand for the bin delivery, to position it just so on the front lawn. After all, we need a good chute and it has to line up, right?
There I was, after work on Tuesday, dumping out a box of plaster. testing out the chute. Version 1 wasn't quite right - it needed some walls. After the test run I only dreamt about building a chute 2 nights in a row. Is this normal?
Friday December 1, 2006
On Friday we had a scheduled furnace maintenance so Andreas was at the crack house for most of the afternoon. He managed in that time to fix the chute (after we had many discussions at home on the logistics and engineering of it). He also removed two bathtubs and dumped about 30 boxes of plaster into the bin.
I stopped by Mark's Work Wearhouse and picked up a set of steel toed boots. I am glad I did! I also went to get some groceries and made a bunch of sandwiches for the crew the next day.
Saturday December 2nd, 2006
A skeleton crew of Jordan, Andreas and myself (an hour or so later) started on our big demo/fill the dumpster weekend. It's not as easy as you might think to drag all your friends over (repeatedly) so we just dug in ourselves.
I set about moving command central down to the basement because, for some reason, I actually thought we would be ripping that room out on Saturday.
It was also a chilly day, and of course we had turned the furnace off and opened the windows. However, once you get working, you don't stay cold for long!
Eventually I joined Jordan and Andreas on the second floor and they had cleaned out all the front room from Jordan's previous smashing and were working on the middle room. After that it was a lot of shoveling and dumping down the chute. Then the leaf blower borrowed from Foreman Al comes in and blasts out all the darn cellulose insulation.
The front bedroom closet was actually de-constructed as we intend to move it so the room looks huge now.
Nina was dropped off about 1:30 to help out so I suited her up in Erin and Sarah's demo clothes and set her to work. She did a great job of sweeping, pulling nails and shoveling the debris. After a few swings of the sledgehammer to break down the bathroom vanity I think she felt like part of the team!
In the bathroom there were, Surprise!, more needles...however the ceiling revealed a stiff and long dead raccoon carcass. That was about the most exciting discovery of the day. It went in a box and down the chute also!
Tina and Anna also came out to help somewhere in the 3 - 4pm so now we had a full compliment. Andreas was the lifter and hauler, Jordan was the destroyer and we four women were the shovel and sweep crew. I have to thank everyone for all their hard, hard work.
By 7pm I think we had all had enough, but the upstairs is now entirely stripped from top to bottom and from front to back. Only the flooring remains! Next day...
The story of how we bought the crack house
Common references in my scrapbook:
Andreas: god love him for putting up with me and my big ideas
Me: the other half of the loony toones who decided to buy the house.
dodgy: means sketchy, bad, worse, 'imagine that' and 'can you believe it?'
ch: crackhouse
front room: main floor a.k.a living room
middle room: main floor a.k.a dining room and Command Central
stolen goods room: this is at the front of the house in the basement - the police told us that is where the previous tenants stored their stuff