Say Uncle!!

We only had 3 weeks with the last dumpster.  Sheesh.  So, we had to pedal to the metal to get it filled.  Our last weekend of packing it in was the 20th & 21st of January.  I was occupied with school projects on Friday, so Gabe diligently went out to the site and removed the plaster from the remaining areas: the first "bedroom" of the upstairs and the stairwell.  On Saturday, I came out and we removed lathe, cleaned & broke down the chute and started in on removing leftover paneling in the kitchen.  We made some interesting discoveries that day that I can't wait to tell you about!

First, pictures from Friday's work:

A small closet over the stairs removed

Looking down the stairwell:

Tin cans found again covering holes under the plaster:

Hee Hee

On Saturday morning we had a light dusting of snow and a little ice, so we had a fun commute from my parents house.  Our dumpster looked dangerously full, but after Gabe took boards and walked on it, compacting it as he went, it was fine.

Next we have a shot looking up from under, where the closet used to be:

We kept the door pretty well closed and the propane heater running this day since it was below freezing outside.

Lots of lathe to remove from walls and ceiling!

Lots of trips to the dumpster & lots of plaster bits to clean up...

I am so excited about the love letter I found in the walls of the stairwell!  As I was cleaning plaster scraps out from between studs, I found an envelope postmarked from 1918 and a card with a love note right next to it!  I haven't taken the time to clean it up and investigate it yet, but once I do, I will say more.  That was pretty exciting.  We also found some playing cards and some scripture cards in the stairwell wall.  Who would have thunk?

Now on to the kitchen.

This was a whole nuther animal, that's for sure.  After Gabe removed a weird brick ceiling stack and the yellow bead board paneling we started in on the flooring.

What a mess we made!

While Gabe was doing these things, I was removing nails from salvageable 2 X 4's.  That is back breaking work, I tell ya!  :)  

The fun part though was removing the flooring.  There were 7 layers of flooring in the kitchen that we saw!  Five layers of different colors and styles of linoleum and a layer of hardwood and then the subfloor.

The bottom layer of linoleum

In between layers of hardwood and linoleum, we found a layer of newspaper, and in one spot, the paper was completely readable and we found the front page of The Washington Post from Wednesday, November 14th, 1956!!!  That was the highlight of the day, for sure.  We are thinking about framing and including it in with the house.  See for yourself:

Discovering....

Uncovering....

And here it is:

An historian's dream!

Notice the article on the left reading "High Court Rules Out Segregated Bus Seats".  Now that's big news!!!!  There were other snippets that we found with interesting advertising and pictures that we managed to save despite the fact we are handling them with respirators and bulky leather gloves.  I also found a dime on the floor from 1904!  A very interesting day to say the least.

We did manage to get some of the floor ripped out, but didn't get too far since we were getting really tired and it was getting pretty dark and creepy looking into that crawl space down below.  There were a lot of rotten spots; my foot actually went through the floor at one point.

I'll finished things off here with a short video of the kitchen floor as we know it.  I had a respirator on, so the audio might not be very clear:

We took a break the next weekend, even though it was beautiful weather!  Gabe had a head-cold and I had beaucoup projects to work on, not to mention we got a much needed break.  

By the way, when Dad paid for the dumpster, he said we filled it to 6.5 tons, by ourselves!!  That seems unreal to me.  A friend told us that if it was filled with water, it would weigh 12 tons.  Still.  We ended up paying extra for the added weight.  It was probably all the plaster.

We are looking forward to going out there this weekend and finishing up removing the floor in the kitchen and bathroom.  I am going to try to make it out at least for Saturday, barring any major school projects.  This semester has been a doozie, so far.

Well, stick a fork in me, I'm done!