Bagster badass

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Just buy one of these for all the demolition. Only $29.99! And a $100 fee to come pick it up. Way cheaper than getting a dumpster!Unless you end up needing four.

Demolition derby

At this point the entire kitchen and first floor bathroom have been removed. Pretty much entirely by this guy.All the old appliances are removed and the ceilings and walls are gone. So is all the tile.We might not be able to use the old pine floors underneath after all. They're pretty rotten through and there are a lot of replacement boards down there already.Taking up the floors was sort of Phil's Waterloo. He says there are an insane number of nails per square foot keeping the plywood over the original flooring. At least he got to saw this huge pipe out today. Nasty. It stunk like a cesspool, apparently. I wouldn't know, I was at Publix at the time.But I have actually done some work! Mostly just carrying debris to the dumpster and removing nails. But still. Go badgers! We're hardworking critters.Everything is covered in a fine coating of dust. And I'm washing dishes in the bathtub. But if you use you imagination, you can tell it is all going to be worth it in the end. And you'd have to be blind to miss the progress, which is sort of satisfying (although in this case progress = total destruction). Here's the kitchen this time last week...And here's the same space now...Getting there! Eventually.

And so it begins!

Goodbye old kitchen! The long-awaited renovation began last night... There are so many things I want to get rid of. I don't even know where to start. How about this wall that cuts off half the room? (and believe me, you don't want to cut off half the room when your house is only 13 feet wide) Or maybe this non-load bearing wall/beam/thing? I mean, because who doesn't want the magical effect of lower ceilings? Or maybe these pressboard cabinet thingys. This one used to have plexiglass covering the front, perhaps to evoke that classic "my favorite 7-Eleven in Compton" feel.Replacing this whole window and maybe the sink as well. And I can't wait to get rid of the counters. These ones are 100% plastic and feel like McDonalds tables. Thatcher came over with a ton of scary roughneck tools and proceeded to tear things apart. He had a great idea for this original door--we can make a dining room table out of it! When we are done with this project. Sigh. He and Phil tore out the bar... And took out the wall. They found crumpled up Creative Loafing newspapers stuffed in there. That will explain our crap insulation. Then they went to town on that low-hanging ceiling piece.We had always suspected that the heart pine floors might continue underneath the black and white tile (modeled here by the pups).Thatcher took out some of the tile and it's confirmed! Yay! Nice shiny hardwoods to come in this new kitchen. They'll need a lot of work but it will be worth it.Overall it was just an amazing night of work! Very inspiring for going forward on this big project. I pretty much just hauled debris but it was great to see these guys do so much in just a couple hours.

Flags of our Phillips

Time to hang up the flag! Just in time for the 4th of July. Phil's job, naturally.But what's this? Look a little closer...is he...injured?To any unobservant onlooker, it might appear that he simply got smacked in the head with the power drill cord. But he wants to make sure that everyone knows what really happened--he got this scar fighting for our flag.

Landscaping for dummies

So the yard has sort of been a nightmare. Overgrown, messy, weedy, probably full of ticks or bears or something. Here it is back in February, before we had our new fence.Scraggy. Bleah.We added many bags of fresh mulch and bordered the big sweet gum tree with rocks from all around the yard. Also the hydrangea bloomed and that helped a lot.Added pebbles inside the bordered tree to keep it from looking untidy. I really like that a lot. But the messiest part was actually right outside the fence. The sidewalks were busted up from the sweetgum's fat roots, there wasn't anything growing there and it just generally looked unkempt. So what did we decide to do? Pull it all out! Even though we have no idea what we're doing. I mean, why not, right? My dad decided to pull out some of the offending sidewalk while he was at it. And mom helped too! They love to help. It's what they do when they come to visit. Here it is, post-parental help tornado. The big sweetgum root really seemed like a nice feature to play with. After all, you can't take it out without compromising the stability of the tree, so we decided to copy what some of our neighbors up the street had done with their ginormous roots and just kind of work it in to the landscaping. One side of the yard gets a lot more sun so we decided to plant it with heat loving, drought-resistant stuff.Here's some cute little succulent-type plants we found at a really nice greenhouse in Charlotte, NC.I'm especially fond of the hens-and-chicks. Sempervivum! I hope they propagate.The other side is shady and has that big root, so it looks more like a woodland garden. Phil wants it to look jurassic--he found this neat mossy ground cover that will hopefully spread out...if we didn't already accidentally kill it with the heat the week before we had a chance to plant it :( I think it's looking pretty cool though! There's a small hosta and a fern and then this burning hearts that I planted right in the root nook. Again with some small pebbles throughout to try to tie it back to the sweetgum in the yard. And neighbor Amy gave us some creeping jenny that will hopefully take root as well. The little rock wall is mostly scavenged from neighbors yards (with permission!) but I think we need to build it higher so we're gonna need to get some more flat rocks. My young neighbor Ava informed me that as it stands right now any dog could just walk right into it. Then Billie Jean proved her point and walked right into it. So yes, it needs to be a bit higher.Pretty cute for now though! Definitely a lot better looking than it was. We'll come back to it in a few weeks when everything's had a chance to settle and see how it's looking.