Sunday.Funday

While there was no additional snow accumulation today, we were still wondering who would show up for more demolition. C woke up for his coffee run, and then fell back to sleep. When helped the Greek out with some tasks around the house, such as, taking the garbage for pickup on the tractor and finding the plow (this was buried in the snow). We made it to the property around 11:00 am, give or take a few minutes.

 

Upon our arrival, we examined the progress that was made the day before:

 

 

I am standing where the bathroom used to be to take this photo.


I ventured back down the hill with a sled full of salt for the Greek to use on his steps. C continued to work at his leisure, taking down and bagging all of the insulation.  I left to meet some girlfriends for shopping. I know, I know....there was work to be done!

Regardless, Rob Sr. and Featherweight showed up around lunch time and got to removing insulation. The next step was tearing down the kitchen. Rob Sr. effortlessly removed the refrigerator and dishwasher to be scrapped and then got to prying away what was left of the cabinetry. When I made it back to the property, the kitchen was basically gone, so I began clipping the wires.

 So long dishwasher, you have met your match.

C taking care of the last bit of counterspace. I was planning to put my KitchenAid Mixer there :(

Good thing I don't have one of those.

Note to self: floor tiles SHOULD NOT be removed this easily


You might be wondering just how we are able to see in the dark past 4:00 pm. The answer is simple:

Macgyver Style: ENGAGE
(I feel it necessary to state that the Sleeveless one used to wake up BEFORE SCHOOL to watch Macgyver reruns...)

 

Once it was dark, the fire roared with the last of the burnable items.

Much more fun to come this weekend, stay tuned!




 

There once was a trailer...

And by that I mean it's as good as gone. 

When we initially purchased the Pyles Property, it came fully equipped with this beautiful piece of metal:

She's a Beaut!

Her good side :)

Can you sense my sarcasm? I sure hope so. Not only is it ugly, it's got bats living in it. Yes, BATS.  Although the trailer is clearly an eyesore, we concluded that it would be stuck there until spring, at best.

I thought wrong.

 

 

Enter: Rob Sr. (aka: Dad; aka: Master Trailer Destroyer)

 

 

C woke up bright and early for morning coffee to a crazy snow storm. Obviously, we wouldn't expect anyone to make it to the property today. Even the highways were bad, so I hear. Through hell or high water, today was the day the trailer was leaving.  See for yourself:

Interstate Snowstorm < Trailer Demolition



C and myself made our way up from the Greek's to the property around 9 am or so. To our surprise, everyone else made it there shortly thereafter. There must have been at least 2 feet of  snow on an un-plowed driveway. NOTE: that back country roads are not a priority don't matter at all for the plow trucks, and they don't salt out this way. 

 

 

The Sleeveless One and EJ arrived first and pulled into the driveway with his big pickup truck. If you look closely, the remaining posts for our split-rail fence are located in the bed.

Rob Sr. and Featherweight just barely made it into the driveway.

You could hardly see the tires on the vehicles, which posed a problem while trying to get out. Luckily, we made friends with our neighbor who owns all sorts of snow removal tools. He came over with a Bacco and some chains and that was that. Since then we have begun our list of things we need to own in order to simply leave our house during the winter months. My personal favorite being an UTV. Throughout the course of the day, we saw one of these, and a few snow mobiles just crusing right along. Necessary? YES PLEASE!



Imagine that is me behind the wheel.


First thing first: FIRE. Apparently, fire is ALWAYS needed.

Rob Sr. busted out the demolition tools and ordered us to work.

Step 1: Remove tacky wood panneling from every room, until nothing remains but insulation. Crow bars and hammers are welcome.

Rob Sr. showing us the ropes.

EJ utilizing her demolition skills.

C testing out the crow bar technique.

 Admiring his work.


As for me and Featherweight, we were tending do the fire by carrying every single piece of wood panneling to the fire.

Slowly but surely the fire was burnging good.

It was nearly lunch time. C and I took our sled and headed for the hills. Literally. We rode the sled down the hill. Don't judge, we don't have an UTV yet. We had some delicious lunch with the Greek and his wife, then pondered how we would get lunch back to the others. THE SLED, OF COURSE! We loaded up the sled with good eating and another 12 cups and off we went. Upon our arrival, another problem arose: Where will we put our tea and scrumpets? Rob Sr. determined there were still a few good doors on the trailer that would make a great dining facility.

Sorry about your luck, door. 

Before you know it, all of the wood panneling was gone. Sunday was going to be a big day full of bathroom and kitchen demolition. Did I mention that we will also be having another fire???





Seasons Eatings

Our holidays start just like anyone else - faith, family & facial hair. For me I am always lacking in the latter, I said latter- not ladder! I feel like we have been staying at the greeks and the property every weekend for the last 3 months. Our 'holiday season' also seems to be starting earlier and earlier. It began in October with Emmett's and is showing no signs of stopping. Not everyone gets to enjoy extended Thanksgiving like us though, eating 4lbs of bacon among 5 people on opening day is considered normal, right? Well maybe I am exaggerating - there was 6 of us.

All in all DeerThanksMas went very well, except the family ate more food than a province in some 3rd world country. Better make that a second 2nd world country, baby Ryan is already eating ham. Unlike deer season and Thanksgiving this was the first official holiday we got to celebrate as new property owners. Since A and I felt that adequate money was spent this holiday season, between the property and a new transmission for Kevin, we opted out of the traditional spousal gift giving this year. With no tree, no gifts, no cash - we woke up early Christmas morning and put our bags in the car. We stopped at Sheetz for our free coffee (you know I can't pass up free) and we began our trek up to the property. Being that it was Christmas day, I softened my stone heart and allowed A to listen to Christmas music. When we arrived, the greek was a miserable mess, he clearly cannot stand being sick. Since he is convinced that "if you don't use it, you lose it" he was bound and determined to stay outside the majority of the day, despite his having such a horrible cold. With the women in the kitchen - greek and I walked out to the rock. We talked of stairs for the tree-stand, admired the new roof on the tree-house and looked for deer tracks, hopeful that we haven't harvested the entire population.

 

 

I wanted to go up to the property to burn some more of the hillbilly trash and rotting wood out of the yard. Since I knew he wasn't up for the jaunt, I took a walkie talkie (come back) and headed in via scrubgrass. With all the snow on the ground it was much easier to see the survey markers so I walked the west property line to the road. This has been the best purchase I have ever made, I would know since I seldom purchase anything. I unlocked the shed, started a fire and was enjoying the quiet serene winter.

That was short lived because the sleeveless one showed up to do his standard arrival routine. He is bound and determined to remove all of the gravel from my very well manicured driveway. We removed a few boards from the dog house to throw on the fire and headed down to the house for the first round of eatings.

After the feeding, the majority of us headed back up to the property to give gnp time to put the house back in working order. Out of all the hillbilly structures on the property, RobSr. was quite sure that the dog house needed to go first and was devaluing the property at a rapid rate. I will let the pictures speak for themselves - Hulk smash

 

 

It isn't very common that you burn dog houses on Christmas day but it is a big world out there and I am sure we aren't the first. Who knows, this might become a yearly tradition although our future dog might not appreciate it. Either way it was a good time and I am quite confident it won't be the last of those.

Hows Your Fence Pt. Deux

After recovering rather quickly from the horrible home depot & lowes display of bad lumber I pressed on, determined to find a reasonable place that carried real wood at real prices. That is when i stumbled across our salvation of fencing with West Virginia Split Rail.

 

My only concern was that I would not be able to find it locally and would have to freight it from some faraway land. Since we are only fencing frontage and not a horse pasture, I did not want to have to pay more to ship than the wood was worth. On second thought that would not really be too much of an issue seeing how the sleeveless one is attempting to solely finance an entire oil sheiks lifestyle by driving old blue to Morgantown, sometimes multiple times in one day. I called around an found that HPStarr carried it and had more than enough for our needs. Unless of course you follow the measurements given to us by the greek and chriff - I'm fairly confident they did not measure the right property, infact I am not convince he even measured at all. The sleeveless one and I decided that we would stop early Saturday when they opened to pick up the first of many purchases for the property. Except for the un-named person who can't park their car correctly in our back pad at the apartment, the weekend seemed to be going without an issue.

So far so good- but not so fast.

We went in at the top of the hill to wave at the property before heading down do the greeks. The sleeveless one pulled in though because he saw both shed doors were wide open. B-e-a-utiful. Sure enough, as expected, the entire stack of rough cut lumber had mysteriously disappeared in the last 5 days. With the stench of discount beer and poor personal hygiene in the air, we knew who the culprit was. Regardless we had 12 cups, started a fire and began the well known fence digging ritual. Oh and called the police because in case you were un-aware it takes 3 days for them to arrive. Welcome to living in the country! There were quite a few large rocks in the way but for the most part it went faster than we expected. So for a Saturday, half filled with state trooper mumbo jumbo, we at least got all the sections laid out and got 5 sections put in along the long side before we called it quits. Not a bad day after all.

On Sunday I woke up at 0 dark 30 for the coffee club, (a now weekly tradition it seems) came home, had some breakfast and then A & I got right back to it with the fence. We ran out of sections because we decided, while building, to go up the driveway an additional section before having the two rails drop down on the ground. So although we finished what we had, as far as supplies go, we will need to give it another go round to completely finish the job. Hopefully this time without a surprise discount beer, brut wearing, motherless shed theft.