A Fun, Productive Week

We enjoyed a great visit with Jenny's parents between Christmas and New Year's.

Along with having plenty of fun, we had a very productive week in the realm of "projects." :o)

The men ordered and spread a load of gravel in the driveway by the basement. It was torn up during "The Project" this fall, so it is a definite blessing to have it usable again.

Grandma sewed "window quilts" to help keep the cold out and the heat in! (She can testify that quilting with a 2 & 4 year old is much more . . . umm . . . exciting (?) than doing so on your own.) :o) Thanks, Grandma!

The men also removed the remainder of the chimney . . .

Before:

During:

(Peter supervised.)

After:

And although it's pictureless, it must not go undocumented that the ladies spent significant time cleaning up the black soot which managed to settle on every horizontal surface of the upstairs! Socks were still turning black even after multiple moppings!

The chimney brick was deposited in the creek, much to the kids' delight. The flood of early December wiped out a significant portion of the creek bank, so the chimney brick is the beginnings of what will be a retaining wall sometime next summer.

For the record, Peter's hands are still black in the creases. :o]

And then, last but definitely not least, the men tore down the walls which blocked in the back basement bedroom. Due to staging issues with our storage and such, we're working on just one room at a time, and this room had the least "stuff" in it. (Credit to the ladies for multiple hours spent removing what stuff was in it!)

We plan to use this back bedroom as our office and also a guest room until the front bedroom gets refinished. We decided to remove the block walls because they're difficult to work with and impossible to "adjust." We wanted to move the door over and put in some proper closets. So, down with the walls! One HUGE praise is that the mold resulting from former water problems appears to have been concentrated in the carpet and paneling!! We really weren't sure what we'd find when we pulled out the surface coverings, but it seems that most of the mold went with them! (At least there were no huge mushroom-like creations growing on the walls . . . !!) :o)

What a blessing to have Dad's truck to haul it all away!

And the kids definitely enjoyed the trip to the dump as well! :o) (Mommy used that time to take down the Christmas tree, while Grandma worked on window quilts without "help.") :o)

So that was that! In the midst of it all, we enjoyed great fellowship and more than a few rounds of Rummikub and other fun games. And our socks are no longer turning black. :o) Thanks Grandma and Grandpa! We love you!

So Grandpa, would you rather move brick walls or snow?? :o) At least the brick walls don't come back! :o)