Destruction City

Day 5 dawned late, not really getting started until after 10:30.  (See day 4 if you want to know why...)  Dave (awesome brother) & Jess (awesome sister-in-law) came into town to help.  We headed over to the house and met Leslie, VJ & M4 (extended family.)  Leslie got cranking on power washing the carport and M4 & VJ took over the iPhones and checked out the games.  Dave attacked the bushes in the front yard and took them out.  (Don't worry, they were too overgrown and badly pruned to save.)  The remains are headed to the Banch for the burn pile.  Jess and I took out the last room of carpet.  Actually, I got through about 2/3 of it, but then the stomach cramps started again and Jess, bless her, took over and got the rest out.  Almost all of the carpet is now outside in a dump pile.  One bag did end up out the back window due to the stench.  (oops) 

From there, we divided and conquered.  Jess and I took on the front bedroom and scrubbed the floor with bleach water.  While sitting there, I tried the water on the wall and discovered that the cream walls are actually white.  Can't tell if I was happy or disgusted about this, maybe both.  Anyway, Jess and I worked around the entire room with scrub brushes and eventually a mop. The walls are now a relatively clean white.  The bad news is that we discovered they painted latex over oil based paint, I think.  The paint peeled off the trim with little effort.  Guess I see sanding in my future! 

While we were working on the bleaching, Dave tackled the closet doors, taking them off hinges and removing the carpet from the floor of the closets.  A little before 2, the Zei showed up.  Bless you Sam and ML!!  (ML is a fellow 4th grade teacher and Sam is her son who was dragged in!)  Zei jumped in taking down all of the spider web ridden drapery hardware and Sammy found a pair of gloves and learned all about tearing out carpet tack strips.  At this point, certain members were starting to understandably revolt in need of food.  Les and I ran to grab lunch, THANK YOU LESLIE for a great lunch.  The Dairy Bar came through again, gotta love those chicken taco salads!

We dined al fresco, sitting in the patio chairs from Colorado, in the front yard.  I would like to say it was because it was such a lovely day, but in reality it was cooler outside than the 96 degrees it was registering inside.  There was also a nice breeze.  We sat and visited in the yard while we enjoyed lunch.  We continued to sit after eating lunch and eventually (reluctantly) headed back inside.  During this bleaching effort, I took the mop to the ceiling and tried to wipe down the cappuccino paint.  Can you imagine my disgust when I figured out the ceiling was painted white, not the color it appeared?!?!?  Yeah, under the nicotine yuck, there is white paint.  Let me tell you, cleaning that gross off the ceiling is enough to prevent me from EVER smoking.  If anyone else needs a "no smoking" demo, send them my way!  After learning that heat exhaustion, full tummies and bleach stench don't go together, we decided we should head to house and recall the meaning of air conditioning.  After another nap on the floor (just in case you're wondering, the floor is MUCH cooler than my bed and I was WAY too filthy to get in the bed) and looking at wedding pictures, Dave, Jess, me, Mom and Terry headed back to the house to meet the (M3, Les, VJ & M4.) 

I'm not sure if there is a measuring tool, like a thermometer or seismograph that measures testosterone, but if there was one, it would record off the charts at my house at around 6:30 pm.  This evening at 6:00 pm I had a kitchen, albeit an extremely out-dated defunct kitchen.  At 6:45, no more kitchen thanks to Jon, Terry, Dave,  M3, an ax or two and a sledgehammer.  YAY!!!  It is now completely loaded into the back of a trailer and headed to a carbonization location (aka burn pile.)  For those of you into recycling, like me, I wanted to take the cabinets down and donate them to habitat.  Unfortunately, this was not possible because they were built in place.  Unless some poor person wanted to make the exact same tiny kitchen with the same paneling, saddling habitat with the cabinets wasn't the great idea I thought it would be.  Besides, the joy the guys from destroying the room was more than worth it!  I've attached two photos, one "before" shot of the kitchen, back when someone was living there and one "after" shot.  (Not to worry, I did get some good shots in with a small ax and the sledge hammer.  I can say, it's not as easy as it looks on TV!)   During all of this, the girls visited outside and sweet Mom swept the front porch and walk so we would stop tracking dirt back in as we tried to get it out. 

It is now 11:46 and all of my sweet helpers have headed home to crash and I should follow suit.  On deck for tomorrow is more revealing of white paint, straightening up the kitchen and getting back into a normal/school sleep schedule...  We'll see how far we get!