Let the Games Begin

Our first couple week of work slipped by so fast that I didn't have a chance to update the blog. 

Time to make up with lots of pictures!

The house tented...like in a cartoon!

Eric and I took advantage of our vacation in Oregon to get the house tented. I was a little bit disappointed to be missing the whole process, but it worked perfectly in the schedule. Luckily we have many great friends that volunteered to take pictures!

Once we got back from vacation both the tent and the termites were gone and we were ready to start cleaning up. We first vacuumed the basement to make space for some tools and then moved on to the refrigerator and the 1920s stove that came with the house. Since Eric has to work during the week I took care of vacuuming the crawling space. The house had been vacant for over a year and many spiders had made that their home, working really hard to cover any possible surface with webs. Beside that the previous owner seemed to have used that as a dog house and a personal dumpster. You would be surprised of the “treasures” I found while working down there. Goes without saying that after spending almost a week vacuuming and not being done I have plenty of respect for the property inspector that crawled down there before fumigation!

Almost felt bad when I had to take that down...So much work!

I wasn't smiling anymore at the end of the week!

Nice combination of spider webs and lint in our basement

The front yard before the pruning

The weekend came faster than I expected -we brought over the first tools, changed the locks and got ready for some serious work. 

With the help of John and Todd we cleaned up the front yard. We pruned the oleander trees and the boungavilla, producing enough debris to secure three full loads of greens for Recology. Our plants look a little bare now, but we are happy enough to be able to walk through the trellis to reach the front steps. 

Todd didn't really drive all the way up from Slo just to tame our wild front yard though, he came for business. Todd is a contractor and will be here for two full weeks starting at the end of August to help us. Eric proudly showed him his drawings and walked him through the project. Right now the house has 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, but the bathroom floor is dry rot and the sewer line in leaking. Before moving in we will strip both the bedrooms to update the wiring and make them ready for us to move- that is where we are going to live while working on the rest of the house. We are also going to install a new bathroom in between the bedrooms and remodel the old one later on. Since we need a new sewer line we will also get new plumbing right away. It is a lot of work but Todd is excited and we know how fast he can work.

Making good use of Todd's truck

First full bin. Two more to go