Day Sixteen: Whose Idea was this Jackhammer anyways?!

Day Sixteen begins:

Here's a shot of the Man in action:

I couldn't help but fire up the camera and ask Sweetness a few questions mid-day:

The wrap up is posted below:

And lastly, here is the conclusion of Day Sixteen:

This is a slideshow of a few pics we took:

Day Fifteen: Rock Moving

Day Fifteen begins!

With reluctance, our Man with the Plan allows me to tape him with his new safety hat on:

As you'll see in our pictures below, we had very special guests visiting today!!

Danielle's comment was that so far she's seen a lot to indicate Sweetness is good at destruction but nothing to indicate Sweetness is good at creation YET!

Brenda's comment was that when she saw our posting "We've Got A Live One", she couldn't help but think an electrical fire might be the best thing that could happen to this house.

Our wrapup video is below. If you are not impressed with our progress, then you have obviously never spent a day moving rocks.

Lastly, here are some pictures.

Day Fourteen: Lovin' the Jackhammer

Day 14 begins with the Man with the Plan telling us the what we'll do today:

What he didn't say as a part of today's plan, is it means he uses the machine while I tread back & forth with rocks in a wheel barrow from the house to the dumpster. When he sneaks away for a break, I decided to take a shot with the jackhammer as you see in the video below.

OK, I'll admit, I can hold my own when it comes to pulling down walls (Day Tw0) or ripping out bathrooms (Day Four) or even kicking out plaster (Day Six), but when it comes to pulling up a SIXTY FIVE pound jackhammer over and over, I'm nothing compared to The Man.

Check him out in action below:

I had to leave to to work before the day was done, so Sweetness shows us in the video below everything done on Day 14.

Here is a slideshow of a couple pics we snapped.

HINT: Use the options on the bottom of the slideshow to display the captions or pause the pictures.

We would love you hear from you. Have you ever used a jackhammer before??????

Day Thirteen: We've Got a Jackhammer!!!

If you saw Day 10, we don't have to tell you why we needed to put down the sledgehammer and pick up a pneumatic one.

I had to work today, so it was just the Man and his Machine at the house.

Day Twelve: Beams on the Workshop

The picture above is a "before" picture of the workshop in case you've been lucky enough to forget what a disaster it was the day we closed on the house.


We dropped my brother off at the airport to send him home to snowy Wyoming, then headed to the house to begin Day Twelve. We share the plan for the day in the video below.

Here is an action shot of Sweetness TCOB (Takin' Care of Bus'ness):

And here is an action shot of me TCOB:

And in the video below, we wrap up Day Twelve:

Day 11.8: More Roof Work

Day 11.8 will be a short day to wrap up the demo of the roof above the workshop.

Sweetness came home last night, and he is impressed by what we've done. In fact, he is so impressed he wants to work on demoing the roof above the carport this weekend.

We wrap up day 11.8 below.

Day 11.6: More Roof Work

Day 11.6 (partial day) begins! In the video below, we share the plan for the day. I keep trying to get a green light on using the big saw, and I keep getting denied.

I've really got to get over being disgusted by EVERY nook and cranny in which we find temites eating this house, but you'll see in the video below I'm not there yet.

Day 11.6 ends below. We almost got the roof off the workshop. I have been telling Sweetness the last three days while he is out of town we have been landscaping, so we are excited to show him what we did instead.

Day 11.4: More Roof Work

Sweetness is still out of town, so my brother, Zach, & I returned to the scene of our crime to discuss next steps for our plan to take the roof off the workshop.

In the video below, we do a mid-action check-in:

And here is a wrap up for the day:

Day 11.2: Fiddling on the Roof

Fortunately, My brother , Zach, is in town all week. I'm taking off work early each day so we can squeeze some work each afternoon.

Unfortunately, Sweetness had to leave for a business trip through Wednesday night. He told Zach & I to work on the yard while he is away. Zach & I decided our assignment of plant digging reflected an under-estimation of our capabilities.

SO, we decided instead to try a new approach for the concrete busting (we ordered an air compressor, two 50' hoses & two 65 lb. air hammers) we expect to be delivered on Wednesday morning & searched for a good use of our talents until the goods arrive. The video below shows us pondering our options for a mini-day today.

In the video below, we check in on Zach's progress. The picture on the left shows the outside of the workshop before we started working on it.

And here is the first wrap-up for the day (below).

WAIT! That wrap up was weak! We need Arnold to give us a manly wrap-up:

On a side note, we ended our day becuase the sun was going down. It's fairly cloudy and windy because there is a hurricane blowing into the Gulf. If you have any tips on how to get those planks up, we're all ears. They are attached to rotten wood, so it's a little tough to pull them up.

On a final note, the link below will show you a couple of pictures we snapped today.

http://picasaweb.google.com/picsoflindsey/DayEleven2?authkey=Gv1sRgCODlg_KQwPeVMw&feat=email#

Day Ten: Uh, How We Gonna' Get this Concrete Out?

Look what the cat drug in. It's my brother from Wyoming! This is exactly what he looked like when we picked him up at the airport (at 10:30 at night). We call this look Miami Vice meets Mountain Man.



It's already winter in his home state of Wyoming. In fact, they had a weekend where they got 16" of snow dumped on them a couple of weeks ago, hence, the winter beard. We'll see how long it lasts in the heat and humidity of Florida.

In the video below, we are pleased to include Zach as a part of our demo team for Day Ten.

We got the Miami-Vice-Mountain-Man all geared up with safety google, gloves & a sledge hammer, and started the camera rolling. Check out the video below to see what happened. (Note: In case you haven't heard it, my brother does a great Arnold Schwarzenegger impression).

To spare him further shame, we gave him a few minutes to figure out how the heck to bust out concrete out before starting the camera again in the clip below.

Not long after I turned the camera off from the clip above, things got quiet. Too quiet. I try to find out why in the video below.

After the video above, we asked ourselves, "Uh, how we gonna get this concrete out?"

While pondering it, the boys decided to join me in the yard for yard demo.

We made a video to wrap up the day, but it's too large to upload to this site.

You can see some pics we took with this link below.

http://picasaweb.google.com/picsoflindsey/DayTen?authkey=Gv1sRgCKn2u82i34KJEQ&feat=email#

Day Nine: Demo of the Den is DONE!

Day Nine of Demo was a half day. We wanted to finish the demo of the den, but we couldn't work too much today since we have to prepare for my little brother to come for a week & help with the house. (Just taking the time to stock up enough food for him can take an afternoon!)

A quick video that shows what we're planning to do for Day Nine is below.

You might notice our Big Daddy Dumpster is gone. They came to pick it up during the week after we packed it to it's fullest last weekend. In its place, we have a little Junior dumpster we're excited to start filling up.

The video below wraps up our day.

Ever since Sweetness started accumulating tools when we bought this house, he's been eager to use them. He's even asked me if he can use his nail gun on our coffee table.

I suppose we see his patience to use his tools on the house is running out, as I caught him taking some wood out of the dumpster & confront him in the wrap-up.

Lastly, here are a few pictures we snapped through the day.

http://picasaweb.google.com/picsoflindsey/DayNine?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ7g2OqE9O3x3AE&feat=email#

Thanks very much to all of you that have shared your comments with us! We really love to hear from you, so don't be strangers!

Happy Birthday, Sweetness!!!!

Today is a cause for celebration, as it was thirty-three years ago today the world was introduced to the man I've affectionately come to know as "Sweetness". YES, that is him in the pic below. In fact, he still gives me that face sometimes!!!

(Dearest Lynda, thank you for this picture! I treasure it!!)

Pictured below with his happy smile and birthday booty, I can't help but take this opportunity to say that when you look at this picture- you are looking at the best thing that has ever happened to me.

All he requested for his birthday was a "mister for the hose" so he can cool off while he demolishes our much-aligned-wreck-of-a-"house", but I'm happy to say the girls and I upped the ante by offering gifts of tool boxes with lots of fun little things to go inside, the Florida Building Codes (he said he wanted it!) & some of the items at Home Depot he lingers when he passes such as a FaxMax laser level and Heavy Duty 2 Peak HP Combo Router kit.

To explain- I call him Sweetness because he finds at least one sweet, thoughtful thing to do for me each day whether it's buying me extra special & wide shoes for my monster-feet or always making a point to carry the heaviest bags of groceries.

Please join me in wishing him a Happy Birthday as well as your well wishes for whatever the days in the next year may bring our way.

Day Eight: Demo of the Den Part II

The den is huge. It seems almost as if it has as many square feet as all the rest of the house we spent six days tearing apart.

The pic below shows the den in its original state the day we closed on the house.

Day Eight begins with an introduction as to what we plan to do to keep tearing it apart.

We caught a few action shots today. The first one (below) shows what we had to do to finish off the demo of all the windows since they were still full of THICK plaster in each pane. You'll see more in this clip, but it's an awful lot of banging and chiseling to get those cleared up.

I mention the 80/20 rule in this clip since it seems the last 20% bit of the work is taking as much time to complete as the first 80% we've done in days past.

Our second action shot shows Sweetness pulling down more ceilings. He told me his favorite tool today was his "bare hands".

And here are the pictures we took along the way through the day: http://picasaweb.google.com/picsoflindsey/DayEight?authkey=Gv1sRgCICRpbPFnY6VNA&feat=email#

We've Got a Live One

Oooops. The pictures from Day Seven end with a burned mark in the carpet.

This video explains what happened after the cameras stopped rolling on our day of demo in the den.

Long story short, Sweetness saves the day and turns off the SECOND box of electrical before we leave to go home.