Child Labor

This week was spring break, which is when we planned to do most of the demolition work, but we didn't have a plan in mind for what to do with the kids while we worked. As we have established, the house was pretty gross when we bought it (I suggested that we have a picnic dinner over there to celebrate the closing and Jonathan gagged).  We have lots of kind friends who are willing to help out, but we didn't want to call in all our favors during the first week of a long project. Also, when I told my dad that we weren't planning to bring the kids to the worksite, he balked. Gotta teach the kids some useful skills! 

So on Monday morning the whole crew got dressed in our most expendable clothes and headed to the house with bikes, toys, and movies, hoping that everyone would be happy playing in the garage at least until we could get out the carpet and vacuum the sub floor. It worked!! Man, that carpet was FILTHY (the whole house was basically carpeted), and the padding had disintegrated into dust in places. 

  

Peter was excited to help, a la "Swiss Family Robinson" (Jonathan is reading it to the boys right now. It 's a little over-the-top, but the kids have been inspired to new levels of industry) 

Every time we brought the kids home after being at the new house, we put them straight into the shower. Jonathan worked alone at the house for the afternoon and after the kids' bedtime ripping out nail strips. We did manage to get to Home Depot for a few happy purchases (Stu said that he bought this and "never looked back". So far, we feel the same way).

Next day, linoleum. By this time the allure of the garage had worn off.

This little girl felt very out of sorts...something about spending two mornings in a row at a gross old house wearing her brothers' clothes and receiving no attention from us.

It took me, like, 15 minutes to pry up a square foot of this floor...

But apparently the right man can just fling it over his shoulder like it was nothing. Jonathan and the boys did the rest of the kitchen in an hour or two.

I'm sure this wasn't as unsupervised as it looks. 

You know what they say about all work and no play...

She's very good at picking up nails.

Our super nice realtor lent us their demolition trailer. 

We knew we were getting a great deal on the house; we didn't know it came with free worms!

Our standards have slipped a little. I mean, not THAT much, just enough to sit on a derelict deck and pass around a singe bottle of caramel cream soda.