Moving Along

I'm so tired, I don't know if anything I have to say will even make sense, but I'll give it a shot. We made it through another week. Chiropractic appointments in Beaumont (2x weekly, mainly to be able to cope with 2 year neck injury that has not stopped hurting unless I go have therapy), and in between we worked at the new house; every day, every spare minute. We ave accomplished a lot in a short amount of time, but there have been days that I started to feel so tired. Yes, today was one of those days, and being Saturday, Waylon was working at the fire department; so the kids and I took a much needed nap. This was following a quick shopping trip with a friend, picking Jonathan up from a sleepover, and hauling several suburban loads of boxes and furniture out to the new place. So after lunch, and nap, all was well and we were back to work.

Monday, Waylon needed to work around our Soda house, mowing, and preparing some financial papers, and so Jonathan and I went over to the new place and started pulling out the old walls upstairs. The walls consisted of cardboard like stuff---Masonite. Many of you know this is a type of hardboard made of steam-cooked and pressure-molded wood fibres in a process invented by William H. Mason; but it looks and feels an awful lot like cardboard. I've never figured out why people would actually put this stuff in houses. Hmmm. Anyway, it's nasty. Lots of nails and lots of dust! Yuck. I had a hunch that behind it there would be old wood boards forming the walls and ceiling. I love old wood walls. As we tore into the Masonite, I realized that my hunch was right. Lovely old boards all over the walls and ceilings of both upstairs bedrooms. I'm assuming this will be the case for the upstairs bathroom as well. Now our plan is to pull out all of the nails that can be, clean the wood, and paint (either color, or clear coat).

Monday night the kids and I got sick with food poisoning, which lasted about 24 hours. By the way, even big kids will wake you up all night long if they are sick. That means Monday night, none of us got any sleep. That was pretty awful, but passed relatively fast. I was downing the NingXia and DiGize. Waylon was blessed that he did not eat at the meal which seems to have been the source of our food poisoning. He did not get sick. Anyway, the kids and I were back to work by Wednesday morning. Waylon and his Dad worked together on gutting the downstairs bathroom, Tuesday; they also worked more on pulling out the walls and ceiling upstairs. Upstairs is taking on a whole new look at this point. As Waylon pulled out the trim around the window sills, he discovered a multitude of ancient mud dauber nests, and wasp nests. I've never seen so many in one place in my life! Oh the surprises an old house holds. Also, that same day, while we were at home sick, Waylon saw nine wild hogs out in the pasture. Two large black hogs, one blond adult hog, and six babies.

Wednesday, I cleaned our current house; packed and moved a lot of boxes of stuff out to the cabin near the house (there are three buildings near the house, one we call The Cabin, has a kitchen, bath, and plenty of storage space). Both kids have been super duper helpful at offering to help carry and unload things when we are taking loads out. They are pretty happy that our school break has arrived early (of course this will be followed by Summer school to make up for it-- after we officially move in). Both have also been enjoying our new library memberships to the various libraries in Beaumont, and when they are not helping out, they have been reading good books, and making use of the game apps on their new Kindles.

Some good news that we found out this week is that we now have renters for our current house. As of July first, we will be renting our house out to a nice family that we were happy to meet through a friend/family member. Of course this means we really have to cram and get the work done out at the new place so that we will be moved by the end of five weeks or so. If we're not done with the big house in time, we will be moving into The Cabin. Think one room cabin. It will be interesting.

I spent most of the latter part of the week scraping the dining room floor. The asbestos containing glue residue left over from the old linoleum is nasty, and has to be scraped (or else chemically removed), from what I can tell. I may resort to the latter this coming week. My wrists are pretty sore from all of that scraping and there are several more rooms to go.

Thursday/Friday, Waylon finished up tearing out the upstairs walls and ceiling, plus he scheduled to have several companies come out and bid on leveling the house. We were very pleased to find out that it is going to cost us a third of what we had first been told to have it leveled. Praise God for good surprises! Perhaps that extra money will go toward having the floors refinished (sooner).

I am so thankful for a devoted, hard working husband. Waylon has worked so diligently all week, and is putting so much into renovating this new place for us. I feel blessed for this opportunity to work together on a project that we are both enjoying. I know that all of the time we are investing, we will eventually get to reap the benefit of, enjoy and share with others.

Until then, it's back to work!!!