Week Six

 It is the sixth week since Martin closed on an tigin.  Looking back it is almost overwhelming what we have accomplished, but then I had to ask Martin what changes happened during this week.  The removal of all of the stuff in the house was time consuming, but made it easy to see the changes that were happening.

 The couch and chair are gone, along with the brush that you see stacked in the foreground.

 Pine tree number two is cut up and stacked out of the way so we can start digging soon.

Pine tree number one is cut up.

 Martin has removed as much of the chimney base as possible at this point.  When we dig out the basement, the rest will go.  We just couldn't do it yet, because the sills aren't supported for that kind of work.  Martin has cribbing and a jack supporting the nibbed joint of this sill. Both the front and back sills have nibbed joints. We haven't removed the rocks along the sides of the house to have a good look at the side sills. We are hoping they don't have nibbed joints, but we aren't holding our breaths and suggest you don't either.

We think we have removed all of the metal and garbage from the back yard and woods, but again don't hold your breath. Who knows what will turn up next and where.  

We found three of the four property markers that denote the four corners of our quater acre.  Since the house sat empty for 15 years and an elderly woman lived in it before that, the grounds haven't been well maintained.  We cut down brush and trimmed tree branches along this side of the property and along the back.

Once the side and back of the property had the brush removed and the leaves raked, we were able to stack the wood from the pine trees.  Since it is freshly cut and very green, we need to let it sit and season for a bit before Mattin splits it. Then we will have the pleasure of restacking the split wood.  As Martin says, "It's a spare time job."

The piles of brush and wood have that were between an tigin and the neighbors have been mostly taken care of. Tomorrow we will finish stacking the bit of wood you can see in the background of this picture.

Remember the canoe that had been left in the woods? Well, we've hauled it out of the woods and it awaits it fate.  Not sure yet exactly what we are going to do with it.  The inwales and outwales are rotten, the decks are rotten, it has a crack, and there is a fairly good sized portion of the inside that the fiberglass is exposed due to the inner coating being missing.

The canoe had been good cover for another pile of metal, a car battery, and some trash that also were taken care of and removed from the woods today.