Labor Day - literally...

A bit out of order...but I wanted to give a shout out to my family who came up for a Labor Day weekend to LITERALLY labor.

It was  a full family affair!  Most of us "camped in the city [lot]".  Mom & Dad stayed in their camper and we in ours.  We used Mom's camper as the kitchen. Gigi (my grandma) brought the majority of the food.  My dad, brother, daughter & husband all worked on insulating the attic.  We used scraps of Styrofoam from the outside of the house.  J had the pieces in her little wheel barrow in the attic and she would take & dump the pieces all throughout the attic.  I don't have pics right now, but they are super awesome!  She was an awesome Team Mate!

Dad was in charge of filling the hopper with the insulation cubes.  The machine would separate the insulation and blow it through the hose.

Thumbs up!



 Nathan was in the attic spreading the insulation to the correct depth.  Keith prepped this by getting up their a few days before and hanging strings from the rafters.  This was a guide that Nathan could then use to make sure the attic had the proper amount of insulation spread out evenly.  Pretty clever, those two!

strings for depth gauges, blowing in insulation



The result: pink snow everywhere!

That was one day's project.  The next day - Dad & Bryan helped hang sheet rock in the hard to reach parts.  Nathan could have done this on his own, but saying 'it would be a bugger' is an understatement.

They finished the highest walls in the stairwells.  The rest will be much more manageable for Nathan to complete on his own.  Plus - it looks beautiful!

looking up stair well - lot of high walls here

During down time, my dad and Bryan worked on moving the big dirt pile in front of the house.  Mom & Charliegh jumped in and helped with it also.  Charleigh worked so hard, she got BLISTERS!  The hill is about 1/4 remaining, so I have plenty to do when I get a few minutes to go work.

With all the activity buzzing around the property, I got a bee in my bonnet...I decided it was time for the rickety old fence to go away.  We had a trailer for picking up the insulation and the timing was just right that if we loaded up the fence we could haul it to the dump & return the trailer to our friend.  So I got out the saws-all and the sledge hammer and got to work!  Dad & Bryan helped with a few of the posts. Most of them were rotten (wood put directly into the ground) and one of them put up quite a fight.  Dad and Bry got out the crowbar and pulled that thing up.  Many parts of the fence came loose once we had an end free.  I had to cut it into smaller pieces to make them manageable.  Plus I got to tear things apart with a cool saw!



 Remember what it looked like with the fence?


Old fence - doesn't look as bad the further you get from it....

Fence is gone now and makes the property feel much more open and not so dilapidated.  When I lived across the street I thought about pulling that ugly thing down...well, I finally got to do it!  We've done the neighborhood a big favor!

 

Fence is gone!  Garden dreaming has commenced!