Update June 25

Had to orchestrate a closing for a client of mine this morning, so left Rich to his own devices. He spent almost 30 minutes just waiting in line at the dump to "drop the dirt from his pants" (see previous post) with no success. By the time I called him, he was weaving wickedly around traffic, still loaded with old cabinetry, medicine cabinets and bits of old wallpaper. Needless to say, there was no where to put more trash until we unloaded this, so this necessitated a plan to try again later in the day.

I went to the grocery store for Cheetos (a renovation staple for us), Gatorade, and "everything" bagels. Then stopped at Tookies for the best chicken salad you'd EVER want, and then headed to the house.

By the time I got there, 1/4 of the master shower walls was already down in the bottom of the shower pan, and Rich was smiling, grimey with cement dust in his hair and fading red marks on his face from the masks we're wearing while doing demo. Including the tile, mortar, and wire lath in that shower, those walls are a good inch and a half thick! And yet they still did not keep the water from rotting the shower dam (the short wall at the bottom where your shower door usually meets). The more stuff we pull up, the more rot and damage we see from this shower. It's a good thing it's going away.

Had a Tookie lunch on everything bagel and went back to work. Rich demo'd, I tried to help clean up. I also tried again to drill holes in our doors to replace locks, but that's starting to look like a lost cause. Metal-clad wood doors are far harder to get into than you'd think. And of course the holes are too small to use today's locks. So it'll be either new doors, new locks, or a re-keying set, if we can find one. I'd much rather have newer hardware, though. The shiny/not-so-shiny brass just ain't cutting it.

After a bit more time, Rich had taken down the next wall in the shower, only leaving the wall with all the plumbing left. We'll have to wait for the plumber on Monday to cap all that off so we don't come in one day finding half our stuff in a pool of water.

Tried the dump again to an empty parking lot. Took everything out of the truck, including the sea-bird wall from the guest bath, and waved goodbye.

I spent some more time cutting in (after a bit of frustration not really being of much help except to Shawshank stuff to the truck) in the office and finally noticed a suspicious lack of noise from the rest of the house. Turns out, Rich's gas ran out after he pulled the second wall down.

We're seriously considering leaving the shower floor there for the washing machine alcove. It seems a shame to rip it all out, just to put more tile in. It's gray, dark gray, and pink 1" mosaic, and seems in great shape, so we may just leave it there and have the plumber pipe a new drain. Then we can build a curb around it for the washer and not have to get a plastic pan. We'll see once the rest of the tile comes down whether saving the floor will be possible.

After tearing down the first wall, which abuts the "den" area, Rich found a curled up skeleton with skin of a mouse on the floor. The neighbors said that the house had been infested with mice when she came to clean it out. Apparently, she wasn't kidding. It also explains all the little holes in the insulation in the attic. For whatever reason, this doesn't worry me. We had mice at Ashebrook until the cats moved in. A couple of bloody carcasses under the couch later, and poof! no more mice. One of the mice-lets must have seen the carnage and reported back to the clan that it was NOT cool up there after all.

Took another load of stuff to the dump after we left for the day. At least we're not having to pay for a dumpster this time. The dump is SO close to the apartment, we really couldn't ask for a better arrangement.

Both of us are dragging today . . . we're excited about the changes, but tired of seeing more and more $$ needed for things. Not entirely unexpected, but we were hoping for at least a couple of things to go fairly easy.

Gonna go chill and prep for tomorrow. Probably not much going on this weekend between Rich's work and my clients actually wanting to see property.

That's it!