spring break!

It doesn't feel like break. It does however, feel like spring. One out of two isn't bad. This week I tackled the front porch tear down. First I had to tear off the tin roofing to get at where the roof of the porch attached to the actual house. Then using a reciprocating saw I cut the nails so the roof would come away cleanly and not take the house with it.

Now you see it.

Now you can still kinda see it.

This part was tricky, I decided to do it using the hoe on the tractor but I had never really run it before. So the trick was to not move the bucket the wrong way and smash it into the parts that i didn't want to take down. Once the walls were down I proceeded to smash them up.

Then carry the bits that I could burn to the fire.

and the bits i could not burn to the dumpster.

And at the end it turned out looking like this, a little better I think.

Thats right!

I have been working every spare hour this week, the warm weather is sure nice. Here's an update:

Howard County Auction

This weekend was the material auction at the Howard County Fairgrounds. The preview was friday followed by the flooring auction on Saturday and the window auction on Sunday. I went Saturday to check out what everything was selling at. To get good deals at these things you have to wait around and bid when everyone else has bought what they want.

Today (Sunday) I showed up around 11 am. I scoped out the barns that had the windows I wanted. It's a pretty intense way to buy stuff. Way more crazy then ebay. You have to be sure your bidding on the right thing and know how many are being sold at a time. It all happens within a minute so you can spend a thousand dollars on the wrong thing and then your stuck with it.

Here's the last window I had to load out. They were pretty heavy.

Here are all the windows safe and sound in my Grandmothers barn.

A short video of the load out, the auction is still going on in the background. Mom came to help me.

the love shack

Today I cleaned the 2nd floor of the house. While cleaning I found this small scrap of drywall with a note written on it. By the hand writing I assume the girl wrote it. Was this place a refuge for young lovers of old?

However the less romantic answer could be that it was a refuge for a homeless couple in the early 90s. Nevertheless, it was an interesting thing to find.

I also found this writing on the the studs in the closet I was tearing out. I took some before and after pictures of the top floor to show the difference and just how much junk was up there.

Before

After

I did a short video walk through of the progress on the rest of the house. I've just about filled the dumpster with all the trash.