Wreck this House

So I had this great vision of updating progress on this old house every day. But....nahhh. Not being able to find the battery charger for the camera helps me not feel bad about keeping a better journal as we "Wreck this House", and then lovingly re-beautify it. Now that all the days are blurred together, I don't know what happened when, but here's what's been done so far.

David continued to chip away at the rock wall downstairs, while I worked upstairs scraping the popcorn ceilings off. yuck! I ran back and forth from scraping ceilings and unloading buckets of rocks. David would fill 5-gal buckets with the broken-up lava rock, hoist it through the basement window where I stood waiting to grab the bucket from him and dump it on the trailer.

I think we had 3 trips to the dump to get rid of all the rock. So, we hauled rock up and out of the basement, onto the trailer, to the dump, and then had to unload everything ourselves at the dump....yes, this was tiring. and dusty.

my dew rag kept the nasty popcorn ceiling out of hair...

   

You guys, just look at all that rock, and be glad that you weren't here to move it. We made our own little mountain at the dump.

The basement bathroom wall got punched out, and then we had to skeedaddle on up to higher country for work before we could get the rest of the bathroom knocked out.

It is hard to work right next to one of the world's premier fishing lakes and see boat after boat come through and hear about the catches....and not get to do any fishing yourself! It's been driving David kind of bonkers. ;) What's keeping him sane is that he has a beautiful mountainside to glass all day long where we see lots of antelope, deer, elk, and we also saw our first black bear Wednesday morning!!!! Wowza.

Wednesday as soon as our shift was over at 7, we skeedaddled back to camp, got fishing gear loaded up and ready to go and David took to the water....in his waders and float tube- his first time using his tube etc. for years! He was so excited! I didn't get a fish license yet, so I watched him for a bit and then went on a run back to our "home" and cooked dinner. On the way back, a mama moose and her baby tramped through camp and down to the lake. Awesome!
It doesn't start to slowly get dark up here until 9 or later....so David was able to get in a solid 2 hours of fishing. He was in heaven. And he caught one! Nothing trophy worthy for this lake, but by far much bigger than anything we've caught in Nevada. ;) ...besides a striper or a catfish....

On the camera I have some better pictures...  And then I cooked it and ate it. yum!
 


Hard at work. (David took this one through his scope and then sent it to me. harhar. ) For the record, I was under the shade canopy, with the kindle hooked up above me while watching something on Netflix and waiting for boats to come in...wait, that doesn't sound any better....but at least I wasn't snoozing! Man, our job is tough. ;)


We left for work Tuesday night and got back Friday night to Dad, Chris, and Daniel busily working on re-plumbing, re-wiring, and putting up sheet rock in the basement.
While the men worked downstairs (going bonkers and cussing the stupidity of previous owners...) Spencer and I hung out upstairs and put primer on the lovely wood panels on the master bedroom walls. Spence was seriously loving it, and his enjoyment made me giggle. (Logan came up too, but preferred to just play at Jean and Colin's the entire time. Spencer wanted to hang out at the house with all of us.)
 
After we finished the room, to keep Spencer busy I showed him how to use the pump sprayer. He thought that was awesome! He walked around spraying water on just about everything and everyone the rest of the night, and took cues from David who was power-washing the exterior at the time. In the pic you see David pressure-washing, and then Spencer working washing off the old furnace that the guys hauled up from the basement.
 
Mixing texture for the ceiling...about 10 or 11ish Saturday night.
 (he claimed he wanted to get one of these for Shelly to mix dough...)


Dad seriously is SuperMan. He textured ALL of the upstairs ceilings Saturday night in an hour or so, and wasn't quiting until it was done! Good thing too, because we textured the closets by ourselves after he left, and let's just say there's a big difference between what our work looks like and what SuperMan did. Serious upper arm work-out just doing a closet, and he did the whole upstairs. yeesh.
Dad and the rest of the boys headed back south Sunday morning, and then it was back to just David and me. We masking off windows and doors, David figured out how to use the fancy paint sprayer Dad brought up, primed all of the upstairs, picked out paint colors and grabbed some floor samples....and then I think it was time to head back to work.
Oh yah! Before we left, I unburied my sewing machine from the pile of our stuff in Jean and Colin's garage and whipped out this awesome poolside caddy for Ch's birthday. It turned out so cute, I love it!
 
We had a bit of a delay as we tried to get back to work....
We stopped to get me a fishing license. I went inside to buy the license and David stayed in the car, I think he was on the phone. I come outside with my license, and David isn't in the Jeep, so I put my wallet away, locked the doors and headed back inside the store to find him (he was looking at boots). We go back out to get in the car, and I'm waiting patiently for David to unlock the doors..."it should be unlocked!" he says...not unlocked! Keys inside! ah! Small-town habits die hard- like just leaving your keys in the car all the time! argh! There have been more than several times where Mr. D has just left the keys in the car and it drives this girl [that has a habit of locking the car at all times and keeping the keys with her at all times] a little bonkers. Well this time, our two different habits collided miserably. If I'm leaving my wallet in the car, with other valuables like a laptop and other electronics, I don't care if I'm in a small-town Idaho- that car is getting locked on my way out! Since David wasn't in the car, I figured he had the keys and I didn't even think about looking for them inside the vehicle before I locked and wandered back inside.
An hour or so and some bailing wire later, we finally got back in and on the road north for work. That day was a, "Where's Uncle Lonney??" kind of day. Not only would it have been nice to have a slim jim around, but we also had to replace the Jeep's battery that morning and paid about $50+ more than what we're used to.


Hard at work! ;) I usually sit on the passenger side, but this particular day was fairly warm,  and my right side was getting burned. So we switched spots so I could get a reprieve from the sunshine. I guess the warmth lulled him right to sleep. But as soon as I said, "boat!", he would perk right up.We take turns taking little cat naps through the day....shhh! And when I say we take turned taking cat naps, I mean I'm the one who naps the most while David glasses the mountain with his scope.
 
Got some practice in with his fly rod

And then of course, we did some fishing after work!

Getting my monies' worth for that fishing license....

   

And then it was back to work work work on the house. At the end of our 3-day work shift, we look forward to getting back Rexburg for 6 days for a reprieve from boat inspections. But by our last day off we look forward to getting to work so we can get a break from workin' on this old house!

We got the exterior prepped and painted. Hip hip hooray! Well, most of it is done anyway...I still need to finish the trim. 

 
When you look at the house, it's sometimes hard to tell that we put a different color on it...but looking at this picture helps. The right side is the previous cream and the left is what David just finished spraying with a "Graceful Gray". The gables, shutters, and concrete foundation is now an "Intellectual" dark gray, and the trim will be a "Polished" taupe.
We were outside painting on the hottest day Rexburg has seen for a while! 90 degrees! It was hot, but we worked just fine in it. Lot better than 110 degrees!
And for some reason, I thought it was a good idea to wear shorts while painting....
Look at that ankle line! 
 
We got the ceilings and most of the walls and trim painted (upstairs. basement is on hold until Daddy-o/SuperMan gets back). We pulled out the upper cabinets in the kitchen and also got the floors scraped down, all of the carpet tacks and baseboards ripped out, and the two layers of linoleum in the kitchen teared out. Whew! That was a work-out right there. Then poured some waterproofing/sealer on all of the floors.

I'm excited to get back to the house after this shift is over and see how the interior colors dried and if it all came together...eek! It is stressful picking out paint! Especially for a house that isn't yours! Mom and Dad didn't care to pick out paint, so left it up to me. Ah! I loved it, but it hated it so much at the same time. What if it doesn't turn and we have to re-do it? What if the parents don't like it? It is their house, so I can't do something too crazy or bold that I would like but they wouldn't and would make the house difficult to sell later....
When we get back tomorrow night we'll finish painting the inside( still have bedroom #2 and the kitchen...oh and the bathroom, but the bathroom is kind of a disaster that we won't touch until Dad gets up here to look at it and decides what to do...), paint the exterior trim, and then probably start on flooring. yay! I really wanted to do all wood flooring upstairs and not deal with nasty carpet. And Dad said yes! hooray! I was seriously so excited when I brought it up and he said sure without me even needing to give my well planned list of pros for all wood and cons of carpet.

I leave you with this random thing!
 
When I ripped out the carpet in the linen closet, I found this little card for Shelly (Chris' wife) under the carpet and pad. hahaha! I was hoping it was something juicy, but alas it was some sort of visiting teaching assignment reminder, I think... Also that day, a junk mailer came in the mail addressed for Shelly. It cracked us up! Chris and Shelly bought and lived in this house when they were in school up here...5 years ago? My, how time flies!