Demo Day #2

Well, we sucessfully filled another dumpster this weekend! Thanks to the help of our beloved connection group buddies, we filled 15 cubic yards full of trash! We also were able to get up all the stick down ugly tiles in the attic and empty it so that we could get carpet today- and it looks great! So we're busy now doing last minute finishing touches on the bathroom wall that we moved up there- filling in joints with wall jt compound and finishing trim around the doors and a few pieces of baseboard. We're in a bit of an overdrive mode since we're having a couple and a 1yr old joining us on Saturday. We're super excited to have them, but want to have the attic completely done so that it will be nice for them up there. And you know how it is, once you move in it is doubtful that you care anymore about a few nail holes in the wall and some unpainted trim, so we know we must do it now or we'll never get to it again. Well, more to follow once I get some more pictures together. Thanks again to Greg, Marie, John, Nathan, Spence, Steph, Nathalie, Lanny, Nigel, Jared, Kelly, and the Carroll folks for all your help- It would have taken us DAYS to do what you helped us to do in 2.5 hrs :-).

A hole in the roof

So, we have a hole in the roof, but before you start feeling bad for our unfortunate circumstances, you must know that WE put it there. Last Saturday we decided to put in a skylight in a little room in the attic with no windows. We'd like to make it a little nursery for a 1yr old, and thought he'd appreciate a little natural sunlight :-). So, crazy as we are, we thought, "Hey, how hard can it be? I bet we can figure it out"....and so we did....
Ah, light at last...

"Lord, please don't let this skylight leak!"Ah, 14 hours later and done at last :-)... now we'll just have to see what happens when it rains...

An Urban Garden

Well, on a different note than the normal construction talk, I thought I'd share some pics of our little urban garden here. We do only own about 50 sq ft of grass, but we've managed to create quite the litle jungle. The Church next door was kind enough to let us use about a 15ft strip of their grass for some gardening and Spencer and Steph also built 3 large planters. Our garden is doing amazing mostly due to the wonderful soil we got from a 15yr old compost pile we got from Spencer's parent's back yard. So, this first picture is our little side patio area next to the large church next door. We have a number of plants and herbs (one tomato plant, peppers, beets, thyme, basil, eggplant, sunflowers, squash, zucchini, carrots, mint, soybeans, and a few other just flowering plants) Then behind our house where there is more sun we've planted 5 other tomato plants that are getting HUGE! As of a few days ago we had over 30 little green tomatoes growing which we hope will ripen soon.
We're so happy to have Spence and Steph's gardening skills with us since we never would have thought to create such a great little garden ourselves. We've even started composting in a bin ext to the side patio garden and it has been really fun to see all our extra kitchen waste turn into beautiful dark soil. We're looking forward to building a little plastic greenhouse next spring so that we can stat all of our plants from seed with our own soil.

Super Basement Demo Day

Well folks, in case you've never seen our basement or have just forgotten what it looked like...this is what our basement looked like when we moved in...


But as you guessed, it no longer looks anything like this.

Thanks to the awesome help of our friends Greg, Marie, John, Laura, Nathalie, Lanny, Spencer, and Stephanie and Austin's parents and Spencer's Dad, the basement is now completely gutted. We were very busy on Sunday riping things out and carrying them to our 15-cubic yard dumpster (which actually turned out to be about 5 yards too small). So, here are some pics of the action (used without permission :-).

Whoops, looks like we cought Greg and Marie on a little rest break :-) So, after we got all the stuff leared out, Austin and Missy began the long processes of building shelves for storage down in the basement. Contrary to popular believe, it takes FOREVER to take all the screws out of 80 two-by-fours. Austin worked about 9 hours and Missy about 5 hours today on building these shelves for our future illegal hostel bunk beds...just kidding...but here's the pics you've been waiting for...the AFTER pictures...