Seek and Destroy!

Hola my friends!

'tis the season for DUMPSTERS!

The season for really, REALLY big dumpsters!
For $50.00 more Rick bought the next size up dumpster from the normal size we get. HOLY CRAP. That extra $50.00 got us a lot of dumpster. Maybe too much dumpster. Nah! We are currently having to strategically plan how and what we put in the dumpster so when we have to close the door and start putting stuff over the top we don't kill ourselves trying. 

I'm on a mission to make this short and sweet. I need to bandage up todays war wounds, read a little about ancient Egypt and fall in to a deep, deep sore body slumber.

Rick and I have decided to start from the top down in the house this go around. Sort of. Today we spent most of the day ripping out walls and lots of plaster and lath on the third floor. We can't really tell if the third floor floor plan is original. In the 1940's sometime the house went through it's first major remodel and at that time they still did plaster and lath, which to our joy (not) is the whole third floor, and the whole house!  Plaster and lath if you don't know is pre-drywall; big sheets of plaster wall that make, making walls in a room super easy and fast. Before then, they would hand hammer in one inch wide sticks, about as thick as a wood yard stick all the way up the wall. They would leave a little bit of a gap between each one, then cover the sticks, laths, with mortar (sand, cement, and horse hair). Then they would go over that with plaster and have a really smooth finish. When I rip it out, I know all the men who helped build this house must be rolling in their graves because they put SO much great time and work into these walls. But 100 plus years hasn't been kind to them. Many of them have gotten wet, warped or already have holes in them. To make life easy on us, ha, we rip out all of that plaster and lath so we can move pipes and wires around, along with updating them super easily. 

So our third floor looks a little post dino killing astroid right now. 

We have this funny little room on the third floor that has no windows. For a long time we used it as a giant walk in closet. (Rick's giant walk in closet). But, it always looked weird, and a room without windows is just creepy. So we decided to get rid of it. 

And we did.

Here is Before, entering the windowless room.

Here is a sort of before, inside view of the windowless room.

Hi Rick!

This is a mostly before picture of the third floor when you reach the top of the stairs. The door you see to the right is the windowless room doorway. The door with the orange in the back, leads to a bathroom, another living space and bedroom.

Another, mostly before picture. 

Sorry it's kind of a dark picture.

This is a view looking at the stairs where I just was taking the picture above. The staircase and railings are covered with a tarp in the picture to try and keep as much projectile destruction on the third floor only. To the left is the door to the window less room. The door in the middle is an exit to the fire escape.  Oh and that's the pain in the ass attic fan cover that Rick and I kept dancing around, until I had the A-ha moment that we should just move it for right now. : )

Tah-Dah! No more windowless room! 

I can't believe I only took this one picture. Well, no I can. At this point I had, had enough plaster flung at me and pulled out too many laths nailed to the bottom of my shoes to want to do much more than lay in the grass with the dogs. (I'll get more pictures soon)

I don't know why we haven't taken out that one single 2x4, just hanging out there in the middle. Getting rid of the walls for the creepy room opened up the whole third floor SO MUCH! It's AMAZING! Now we have to figure out how to get or make a chute to get all that plaster down into the dumpster.

All that junk, only needs to go this far to make it to the dumpster, also avoiding the little roof that covers our side door entry way :)

Ps. The lawn you see now, it's pretty sad and dead. I killed off all the weeds, resulting in a fully dead lawn. You can also see the outlines of my garden beds I started. We just got our 10% "congrats on moving" coupon from the USPS  to Lowes in the mail today, and our credit card right now has 5% cash back at Lowes.... So that makes my little bricks I'm using 15% off which is the cheapest I can find them anywhere. Which was enough effort and savings to make Rick agree to let me buy all the blocks I need to finish. Hopefully post dumpster it will be all done!

Even though we have this MASSIVE dumpster for not too much money, we still are trying our best to be frugal with the space. So we set out all the old real 2x4s and various other wood things that can still be used. Win, win,  recycle and reused and save us a lot of space in the dumpster.

Well, some dude came and took it ALL. Talk about easy.

Oh!

I TOLD YOU SO RICK!

I told you people would come get our wood. 

I'm not crazy for saving and setting it aside. 

<3 :-D <3

At the same time this guy started hauling away the wood, two of our neighbors down the street stopped by. Usually it's no big surprise, I'm always meeting folks from around the neighborhood. But this time they knew me! From my blog! And a mutual friend, Hannah! Hi Hannah!

Hi Scott and Bill! You made my day today!

One more shout out! Gail! Thanks for your, "turn a window into a marker board." idea! I turned an old storm window into a beautiful hot pink no trespassing sign. Too bad we had to bitch two drunk ass guys off our property today. Hopefully the signs detour some of the morons.

That's it for the sort of short blog! More to come for sure! Two weeks for the dumpster. Two weeks to rip out tons of stuff. Two weeks to get even more inspired and love struck with our house! 

Oh, and until my plan is finished... If anyone in the KCMO area has real red building bricks they don't want I'll take them! I can't afford to buy enough for building the path I have planned. I can come get them or you can drop them off. If you're lucky I might even bake you something yummy! Spread the word friends! I need bricks!