The work continues..............

Picture an old, rusty Electrolux shop vac. We had tried to sell it in our garage sale when we packed up our stuff to go into the storage place over a year ago. We had bought it used many years ago before we left NY. It didn't sell so, rather than throw it away, we kept it. It has come in very handy as we create all kinds of messes and find old cobwebs and dust in this house we're working on. My hands are so sore and swollen, I can't make a real fist. Russ and I fall onto our blown up matress in Angela's basement every night totally exhausted. We had hoped to be in our "new house" by now but, as President Hinckley says, "Everything always takes longer and costs more than you think it's going to." We have taken the kitchen all the way down to the studs and joists. The wiring is the old "knob and tube" kind found in century-old houses. The plumbing is lots of cast iron and a little copper. All of the copper piping in the basement was literally ripped out. Salvaging copper is a popular means of income for thieves these days what with the cost of copper so high. We're replacing it all with plastic piping (pvc and cpvc). We are finally to a point of starting to re-build now. We put in insulation today and hope to do some sheet rock tomorrow. I am staining cabinets. We opted for the unfinished ones because they're so much less expensive and take less time. (If we had ordered cabinets we would have had to wait a month or more.) Next week we'll be tearing out more lathe and plaster. It's brutal, dirty work but somebody has to do it.......