Work Day

The prom kids left promptly as promised, nothing in the house was broken or stinky, we got all of the food cleaned up, vacuumed and freshly dusted through the house and Windexed the bathrooms...we have a routine now and everybody knows what to do.

We had one showing before the actual open house, so we drove to McDonald's, got some coffees and sat eating snacks leftover from prom with our windows down in the parking lot. Surprisingly, this McD's lot seems to be a waiting area for lots of people. We saw people drive up and just sit in their cars exactly as we were doing. Matt and James played a game where they took turns choosing the biggest chip they could possibly find, and challenging the other to fit it into their mouths without breaking it. It was funny but...you had to be there.

Anyway, one more stop at the house after that showing and we were off to Greenwood for our work day! Matt borrowed a lawn mower because that was the major job to finish - the grass in front was looong. Matt's goal was just to get some stuff cleaned up so that the neighbors could see that "something is happening" at the house. Here is how long the grass was (and of course I forgot my good camera):

Matt set to work trying to discover the condition of the front lawn, and he was so happy. He must have gotten bugs in his teeth because he smiled the entire time he mowed. I stopped him once to ask why he was smiling and he said, "Just happy." He has been looking forward to getting started for so long and now here we are. Also, see that car in the road? Matt waved to it. In fact, Matt waved to every single car that went by. Every single one. James said to me, "He's hoping somebody will stop so he can tell them what he's doing." I swear he tells EVERYONE about this house. He had three kids from the prom in the front room telling them about the fieldstone and the height of the ceilings and the molding...it is good to see him so happy for sure.

Here's a photo of the tree that was blown over in a storm before we bought the house (and also shows a good "before" photo of the lawn). The tree guys are coming Thursday to trim back branches from near the roof and also to upright this tree!

My brother Billy showed up to take a tour! It was fun showing Billy because he is so enthusiastic about everything. Even while I'm gagging about the weird animal smell in the house he is exclaiming, "This is so awesome! I'd move in here today!" He is always supportive. Billy went way out to the back to check a little box that we thought was a dog-house, but he thinks maybe they kept chickens in them once upon a time. There are actually three of these on the property:

I spent most of my time in the upstairs bedrooms (there are three), using a broom to knock down cobwebs and sweep up dust, and then using a wet-dry vac to suck up all the gross stuff. I'm positive the animal smell is from a cat based on the fur balls. It is super gross to vacuum up the crud from a previous owner! All of the floors upstairs are wood (we believe pine) but in the largest room, someone threw down some pieces of carpet. After I vacuumed, Beth went up and started pulling this carpet up. It is truly disgusting! But this will be her and Kara's room, so she enjoys starting to make a little difference there. This is a bit of after-progress. You can see the original wooden windows there. Buddy also came along and honestly did not enjoy himself at all.

 Hopefully you can also see the wooden floors in this photo that will be sanded down and refinished.

Matt spent a little time where the kitchen and front room floors meet, because we are so curious about what is under the parquet laminate in the kitchen area, compared to what we know is in the front room (good wood floors). We were thinking that the kitchen floor might just be particle board, since the kitchen was a later addition to the house. So Matt started chipping away with a chisel:

Here in the next photo you can see the parquet flooring that is on top currently, the gorgeous (yikes) vinyl floor that was put over that, and then maybe barely discerning that there are definitely wood floors underneath that layer. It remains to be seen whether the wood floors (yay) can be restored, but we're super happy that they are there:

Matt also removed some of the thin oak trim on one side of this doorway. The front room (on the other side of this doorway) is plaster, in pretty good condition. The kitchen (this side of the doorway) is wallboard, which we assumed was there because it was an addition. However after removing the trim, Matt could see the original door surround! And it was plaster! They put wallboard right over the plaster. We are going to assume it's because the plaster is in bad condition under this wallboard, so we'll have a decision to make once we get to the point of redoing the walls in the kitchen. To keep the wallboard or to re-plaster. We shall see, but it's fun discovering things about the house as we go along.

I also spent some time picking up branches in the yard, and trash. The saddest thing to me is that there are a lot of McDonald's toys in the yard, and some Legos. We've heard that the place had tons of kids all over at the very end - the descendants of the early owners took possession and that's when everything went downhill. It's sad to think of kids living here in this mess, as they were actually evicted last year when the bank took over.

I will have to get a photo next time of the work Beth did in the front flower garden. We have some flowers coming up and three beautiful lilac bushes (in bloom!) in the yard. I have wanted lilac bushes since we lived in Garden City over a decade ago! Anyway, she cleared out an entire area near the porch and I will get a photo of that next time.

So proud of the twins as they both dug in and worked their heads off the whole afternoon. We grabbed pizza and brought it back to the house and had that and soda leftover from prom, and I guess that's the first meal we've eaten in our new house! Finally my parents came over to see the progress on the lawn, and as usual it was just good to see them, and nice that we will be close enough to be able to run over easily, I'm really happy about that.

Here is the before photo of the house with the grass grown wild (I need to do a better job of taking my befores and afters from the same angles):

And here is a photo of the house with the lawn mowed! I'm sure this doesn't do it justice, but it looked AMAZING before we left, and I made us all run to the big tree by the road so that we could stand back and get the whole effect and that was fun. Oh I forgot to say that we met our across-the-street neighbor, a man named Perry, who was out mowing his lawn too - we just bounded over there in a group and overwhelmed him with our introductions. He seems really nice, I'm glad we got to meet him. I just noticed that Beth's on the porch here, showing how we all feel about Greenwood!  It was a great day!