Weekend Warriors

Our project home saw loads of work this past weekend! We called in all of the troops, and oh my goodness! Almost all of our part is completely finished. Thankfully, we had help from the Broome's, Bulman's and Dad. Some of mom's friends, Cindy and Dennis, even stopped by and helped out after they toured the house. I wish we had taken a group picture!

Outside
Work was going on all over. Dad and Gil got the carpet and falling down railing off of the carport steps.

Before...nasty carpet and a broken, very scary railing.

After...Carpet and railing gone.  Ready to be refinished and re-railed!

The brick wall came down the rest of the way and the root that ruined the wall in the first place was removed.

The men used lots of methods for getting that root out. Each of them took a turn with the sledge hammer and Graham tried to saw it apart.

Eventually, they decided to hook it up to the trailer hitch and pull it out. It worked!

While we were working on our part, the roofers were working on completing the roof. It looks so much better now than before! I cannot believe the difference! I forgot to take a picture of this, but will post when I do. Unfortunately, the roofers ran out of shingles, but promised to be completely finished with the roof on Monday.

Inside
Pam and I removed wallpaper from the foyer and dining room. We were so lucky that the wallpaper was vinyl and pulled off very easily.  We spent very little time getting it down!

It's hard to tell in this picture, but 1/2 of the wallpaper is gone.  I actually could have liked the wallpaper if it weren't for the horrid smoke stains and dirtiness!  Definitely time for it to go.

No more wallpaper in the dining room, either!  And, the toppers on the curtains came down!

In the kitchen, Graham and the dads removed all of the appliances, the set of cabinets that blocked off the den, and Russell got all of the cabinet doors and hardware off.

Mom, Pam and I did lots of work in the basement.  The walls and windows were scrubbed from top to bottom and every corner was vaccummed.  It finally feels clean(ish) down there!  At least there are no more spider webs, etc.

Mom removed the tint from the basement windows and cleaned them inside and out.  Pam scrubbed the brick walls from top to bottom in the whole room!  I didn't have any goodpictures of that for some reason...

While Russell worked on getting all of the cabinet doors off in the kitchen, Graham, Dad, and Gil got the awful shag carpet off of the basements steps. 

Lexie had to be all in the way, of course!  The steps are actually really nice...they just need a coat of paint and stain.

I don't feel like this post gives all of our hard work the justice it deserves, but we were so proud of all that we accomplished, and especially thankful for all of the help!  Many hands make less work! 

We met with Simon, the contractor, Saturday after our long day and made a plan for the rest of the project.  We are focusing on the basement and completing the outside.  Hopefully the basement bathroom, floor refinishing, and painting will be done this week.  Then, we have to wait on the new gutters and a hard rain to see if they solve the water issue.  If all that goes well, we'll be able to move into the basement while the upstairs is completed.  Simon says 6 weeks for total completion.  Fingers crossed, prayers being said!