Summer 2015
The deconstruction is happening, once a neat yard has piles of debris. We have removed the plastic floors, the romantic (not really) corner Jacuzzi tub, and oh yes, all that smelly carpet. All of the trash is in the yard since we intend to haul it away as we do each job, saving the cost of renting a dumpster.
At this point, we have two beds and a few camp chairs, and one recliner as furniture. It certainly helps that there is no need to move out of the way. We stripped out the old flooring and pulled the baseboards throughout the house. I will note that we labeled every baseboard and pulled the nails out so they could be reused. After we washed the walls, we added fresh paint while we still had no flooring. That makes painting go much faster with no need to be extra careful. Katie does almost all of the painting on our projects and uses a designer from Benjamin Moore to help chose colors. It is a free service that helped us a great deal and the local dealer keeps a record of paint bought by the project.
We did attempt to take out the Jacuzzi intact so that it could go to Habitat for Humanity. This one of our favorite places to go and take still usable items we no longer need, like faucets and light fixtures. We also shop there too, because if you are not set on a specific tile or cabinet you can find a bargain. You will see later where we did just that.
Here is the point where we found out that the door trim was added after the tub was put into the room and we could not get it out in one piece. The Jacuzzi just would not go out the door and down the narrow hallway. We suspect that the tub was actually brought into the room before the outside walls were completed.
Here is Katie using her newly purchased sledgehammer. We found that sledgehammers come in sizes. Katie chose one that she could actually swing without hurting her shoulders. In addition, we had to resort to cutting the jacuzzi into parts using a Sawzall.
And we adapted to the “if it is burnable”, it should be burned way of doing stuff in Vermont. Here is Jesse, our yellow lab supervising our burn pile
HawkWind Designs 