On Saturday, Scott took out and replaced the bottom row of the big upstairs windows. He had a narrow ledge to work on, and after he carried the windows to the second floor from the inside, he had move them to the outside through the openings and lift them into place before nailing them. It was nerve-wracking to me, but he said he wasn't nervous at all.

On Sunday, he put the top curved window in. This one he lifted on the outside of the building, but he said it was lighter. It was higher up, so I was praying the whole time he wouldn't fall. But they're in, and he's still with us.

To help him manage the windows from the outside, he build this ledge. So at least he was standing on something level, even if it was only 10 inches wide.

When I wasn't helping to stabilize a window, I was tearing out drywall in the living room and office, burning any wood trash I could, and cleaning up. ​

On Saturday, 9/14/2024, Scott and I went out the river house. While he continued to dig the cistern hole, I kept filling the dumpster. 

I started with the pile of roofing. OMG shingles are a PIA. I had to peel them off the ground and each other, put them in the wheelbarrow, take them back out of the wheelbarrow bits at a time, and throw them into the dumpster. Mind you, I was loading the dumpster strategically to minimize voids and maximize the volume we got in there. 

In addition to shingles, wood and metal were mixed throughout the pile. Any wood that didn't have shingles stuck to it I burned. Other bits had to be carted to the dumpster. 

Okay, then there were BRICKS in the pile. So those got carted into the dumpster, too. Once I was done with that pile, Scott said I "could" move any other red bricks, pavers, or stones if I "wanted to." Challenge accepted. That included about 100 pavers from a patio that had to be lifted up, a load of bricks and concrete pavers from a decorative well of some sort, a stash of bricks on the side of the house, and the bricks that lined the walkway going into the house. Whew.

Trash pile gone! Nice and tidy. The stones in the picture will go along the shoreline, I think. 

Comparison view: (1) Trash Pile, origin story; (2) Trash Pile, decline; (3) Trash Pile, demise; (4) Trash Pile, afterlife.

On Friday, 9/13/2024, we got a 30-yard dumpster delivered. I went out that day and got started moving the trash pile into it. Scott was home working his real job.

The dumpster was so close to the trash pile (actually on top of some of it), that the door would not open. Our neighbor helped me clear a path so we could open the door. I worked a long day. I finished everything but the pile of roofing materials from the garage roof fix. 

Here are before shots of the pile.

Here's how it looked at the end of the day.

Here's the dumpster at the end of the day.

I also had a fire going all day. Here are the coals at the end of the day.

At the end of the day, I was a little crestfallen looking around to see our accomplishments. It didn't look commensurate with the damage done to both our bodies. I guess it is also the phenomenon of not being able to keep an accurate "before" picture in mind when looking in real time at the "after."

First, Scott removed an enormous slab of concrete with a sledgehammer. The slab used to be under the pump house he took down last weekend. When I say enormous, I mean  insanely enormous: insanely thick and insanely heavy. Normal people don't think of touching such things with their bare hands. I felt bad watching him work on it. It took so much effort. Then, after sledging chunks off, he'd load them into a wheelbarrow, cart them down to the river bank, unload them, and arrange them neatly along the shoreline.

Second, we finished gutting the bathroom and then removed all the wallboard from the walls and ceiling of the eventual kitchen. While Scott was working on the slab, I started taking the wallboard down after removing the trim and switch plates. Then he came in and did the bathroom, which included smashing a tile wall, a concrete shower pan, and a concrete floor four inches thick.

I don't have any good picture of the bathroom from the outside where you could see the 3-foot wall on the right where the tiled part of the shower was, the 2-foot wall on the right that housed the pocket door, or the pocket door. All I have are these which show the two walls but with no good idea of context or scale.

We kept the fire burning all day, and when we were exhausted and ready to go home, Scott loaded the last of the mattresses on the truck to put in the trash.

We made a LOT of progress on Labor Day!

We worked from around 9:30 to 7 with one short break for lunch. Here's a summary of our accomplishments

• Cleaned out every room, removing all furniture, shelving, knick-knacks, mirrors, pictures, pillows, bedding, rugs, curtains, rods, etc. from the house except for the stove (the lot will easily fill one dumpster and then there was plenty more volume that we burnt)
• Gutted the kitchen
• Gutted the bathroom
• Removed the bedroom doors
• Removed the fireplace insert
• Opened the wall into the sunroom, removing the barn door and the wall extension that had been built there
• Opened the wall between the kitchen and living room
• Demolished a hutch 
• Demolished an outdoor structure (we discovered from some writing on construction materials that the building was called the pump house at one time) 
• Burned a bunch of stuff

Every item made out of wood, from kitchen and bathroom cabinets to the outdoor hutch, was very strongly built and difficult to bust up and heavy to carry. Also screws. So many screws in everything.

Bathroom Gutting
Still more to do in here, from removing shower, tiling, wainscoting, and trim.

Before-ish and after Bedroom #1
So...no before pictures in the first bedroom? I am not a very good photojournalist. I do have three of the living room from which you can see a little into the first bedroom. That's the best I've got.

Before and After
More to be done in here including removing fireplace housing, removing trim and wainscoting, removing and replacing floors, windows, and doors.

All my post cleanout pictures.
​Again, terrible photography skills on display. So much furniture up here that had to be taken down and out.

All my living room pictures.

I have no closeup picture of the hutch pre- or postdemo. But in the picture of the house, you can see the shed to the right of the house and the hutch between the house and the shed, against the back wall of the house.

Mattresses cost $60 a piece to take to the dump!!! So we're carting them back to our house.