Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Part 2: The Dig

 It felt like such a huge accomplishment to remove all the plaster, the lath, the old clapboards, the carpet, the closet....but oh we were just getting started. 

That dirt was so hard and dry and so packed down. We dug. We pick-axed. Eventually....Troy was brilliant and brought in the tiller. That helped a ton! I made more trips up and down the driveway with the wheelbarrow carrying buckets of dirt than I cared to count. Troy of course made his fare share of trips as well. I tried to work during the day as much as possible, whenever I could. 

 

We left one little strip of the old porch floor installed right by the doorway, since under that is open space down to our basement. Eventually that will have to be removed, but for now it's been helpful to have. As we dug, it was exciting to break through the dirt to the open space under the platform. Exciting and...creepy.

Speaking of creepy, I did find one kind of fun thing as I was digging. I had already unearthed plenty of my usual finds - mostly pig bones and pieces of broken dishes. But I did dig up this little friend:


I really wanted to find more of my little friend but so far, just the one piece. I like to imagine that she was once a beautiful dolly who made a little girl happy.

We actually have gotten a little bit of help with the dig. I have a friend with two darling boys, one of whom is on a baseball team that requires the kids to do some community service every week. They've been bored to tears looking for service and getting jobs like dusting and vacuuming. Oh no, not at my house. When they found out they would be wielding a pick-ax and shoveling dirt they were actually so excited. And they did a great job.



Bedroom Construction, Round Two

I wanted to title this entry "Gluttons for Punishment," but I just barely did that. Apparently we are often gluttons for punishment. And this punishment is way WAY worse than just driving through a Christmas light display on a cold December night. 

Where to even start? 

How about here, with an old yucky bedroom.

 




Now don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for this room. It has served us well for a very long time. Most recently, it housed both of my girls, for years and years, actually. They got along so well, despite the cramped quarters. There was a bunk bed plus two dressers in there! It made it easier to ignore the carpet and walls - they were too covered up to even see!

But with Chase away on his mission and Romney (mostly) away at UVU and Emma moved into the big bedroom, it was time to pay some attention to this little space. After all, Chase isn't that far from returning. So once Christmas was over and Romney's winter break ended, we had one final weekend visit from my brother Peter, and then it was time to tear into it. Literally.

Part I: The Demolition

I spent the first week or so just on demolition. It only took about 10 minutes of work to realize that we were going to need a dumpster. I was at first trying to just pack our big green garbage can and would add more debris to it each week, but the pile grew way faster than I expected. The amount of material we pulled out of that tiny space seemed like more volume than the room could actually hold! The lath, the plaster, the heaps of insulation from the ceiling (although there was absolutely none in the walls) and the pieces of closet that Troy busted up made the dumpster very worthwhile.



Troy reminded me that I would be coming across a wasp's nest at some point. He had killed off the flying nightmares long ago, but we couldn't access the nest. Oh I found it! Luckily it had stayed empty.












We were so excited to finally get the room emptied and the carpet ripped up and hurled into the dumpster. Much of the reason that we were digging this deeply into the room is because we knew that there was actually no foundation under the walls. So if we were going to do it at all, we were going to have to remove absolutely everything from the floor until we got to dirt, and then dig down into the dirt for 2 or 3 feet so we could access enough space to pour footings and foundations under the two outside walls. So when we finally got to the wood under the carpet it was pretty exciting. I pulled out the camera and got ready to film the big dirt reveal.



Only, as soon as Troy pried up the super heavy boards we found....more wood. So he started to pry up the 2nd layer of wood and we found....linoleum! And under the linoleum? A thick layer of newspapers, all spread neatly out. We actually had a lot of fun looking at them - they were all from February and March of 1949 - almost exactly 75 years ago. We saved a big stack of them, including one headline about The University of Utah beating BYU in a basketball game. I think we'll frame that.





Finally under the newspapers we found an old porch floor. It was made of douglas fir, the same wood that provides our living room floor. It was painted, and had to be torn up. We were sorry to destroy it, but it had to be done!



Finally, many inches down below the level of the door, we got to the dirt. It was slightly anti-climactic after all that. Both Troy and I kept thinking that we would pry up a layer of floor and peek underneath only to find a skeleton grinning up at us. Nah. It was just dirt. 


Luckily we still had a dumpster out front....because a whole heck of a lot of that dirt needed to end up there!


To be continued......

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Knitting Knotes and a New Record

Well, after three heavenly weeks, Christmas break came to a close. I wasn't that excited to take Romney back to UVU. We all just like having her home. I know we should all be so proud that she's taking the next steps into adulthood and all that crap. But really I just like it better when she is here. I know it's good, though, for her to be with roommates, working and going to school. Here she is with 6 of her 7 roomies. 

And here she is, just a few days into the new quarter, when snow finally made its late appearance. We had just about the greenest Christmas ever.  

I think that last year we kept our Christmas tree up until January 9th, and that was a new record we didn't think we'd break anytime soon. But...our tree this year was just so beautiful. And happy. So why on earth take it down? We easily broke our record this year, mostly because I put away everything except the tree. I love all of our decorations so much, but it does happen that I get antsy for a clean house and some quiet space. I realized I could clean up everything except the tree, and then we could just enjoy it as long as we wanted. I don't think it went away until the 11th or 12th or something. And of course, by the time it went away, it was time to decorate for bleak week!


And now, some notes on my latest knitting projects. It has occurred to me that I haven't blogged much about my "Kneighborly Knitting" - the little ornaments I knit each year to give to a few family members and neighbors. I believe this was my 12th year of making them. I lined them up in what is my best guess at the order I made them. I'm positive about the first couple of years and the last four, but the middle ones I'm not too sure about. It has been so fun to make them.

Pear, Owl, Sheep, Acorn, Pudding, Bunny, Cardinal
Gingerbread House, Mushroom, Chicken, Sweater, Long Johns


Over the holidays, especially as we watched hours of The Lord of the Rings, I worked on a sweater. It's my fourth sweater. I love the other sweaters I've made, but they are all too big, no matter how carefully I watch my gauge as I knit. But I'm happy to say that this sweater fits perfectly. I absolutely love it. 


 

Then, as my Christmas gift to Peter, I let him choose a couple of patterns out of a new book I got this fall - a Star Wars knitting book. I made him a Death Star, which was a way bigger pain than I anticipated, but it's pretty fun. I'm currently working on a hat and fingerless mitts for him now, all with repeating patterns of TIE fighters on them. 

I love knitting.