Pictures!

At last I have gotten some pictures on a flash drive (thanks to Russ) so I can include them here on the blog. We're still at Angela's so we don't yet have our own internet service on our computer. These pictures are actually ones that we took before we "moved into the house". The house looks much worse now. I'll post some pictures tomorrow showing our work in progress.

Pictures will be coming...

We are not dead yet- not quite, anyway. We are having to go deeper in rehabilitation on this house than we had planned. We have already had a huge dumpster emptied and it is now full again. We have ripped out literally tons of lathe and plaster. We have found some rotting in floors in the kitchen and bathroom so we have had to replace them. We are hopeful that we are on the upswing now- a mere three weeks behind schedule. We are still sleeping in Angela's basement. She and her husband are going away for their anniversary so we will be tending the three boys for the next week. This will give us the excuse for spending some really necessary time getting insurance, car registration, and driver licenses taken care of. We are really hopeful that in a little over a week we will be sleeping in the house despite the continuing construction. It will save on gas (over $3 a gallon here) and time driving back and forth. Today Russ finished redoing the plumbing in the main bathroom on the second floor. The tub drain is slow but seems to work. He had to totally replace all of the supply piping as well as the toilet drain. I spent the day spackling the kitchen, trying to clean up plaster, repairing plaster in the butler's pantry, and leveling the kitchen floor in preparation for laying the flooring. My hands are rough and cracked, all of my muscles ache and my hands are swollen and sore. Russ is about the same. We fall onto our inflatable mattress every night with a deep sigh, or more like a groan. One of our daughters made the comment that we made the choice to do this so we shouldn't be frustrated or discourage by it. I likened it to having a child. You can choose to have a child but there is no way you can know ahead of time all that's in store in the process of raising that child. You don't actually regret having made the decision to have the child but you have days when you're happier about it than others. We're waiting to enjoy the happier times in this house. They will come........ some day............I will try to include some pictures during this next week.

It's true! It's true! It's true!

Today Russ and I finally went to our new church unit: the Dayton, Ohio branch. It's a really tiny inner city branch located in a rented first floor of an office building downtown. Greater Dayton has two stakes with several units but where we live qualifies us to be in the branch. There were two young men and a few little kids. The branch president's wife said there are about 6-8 active families. They have talked about dissolving the branch but are concerned that the people won't feel comfortable going to the larger units. They aren't very well off and many of them don't have transportation other than the bus transit system. Everyone we spoke to was delighted to have us here and said that we were "prayed here". But even in this small unit, somewhat reminiscent of the little Vilnius, Lithuania branch we attended for 3 months except they speak English here, it feels familiar. The hymns are the same, they have the same sacrament prayers, they use the same manuals, the prayers have the same humble, sincere quality. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is unique in all the world. You can go to a meeting anywhere in this whole world and you will feel the same thing. The Spirit is there. It's wonderful.

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.......

We have officially started!

It may be a couple of weeks before I can include pictures. We are sleeping and eating at our daughter, Angela, and her family's house. Lisa, our other daughter, and her son Aaron are here visiting for a little while. Scott and Angela are really good sports about having a houseful of people to shower and feed. We got the truck all unloaded on Saturday without a problem. In fact, we even had time left in the afternoon for a little yard work. This house has been vacant at least a year and we have no idea how well the yard was kept before. Monday was a little frustrating because we didn't really get much done- or at least it didn't feel like we did. Tuesday we drove (just what we needed, more traveling...) nearly to Akron, about 2 1/2 hours to get a pick up truck Russ bought on E-bay. It's nearly impossible to work on a house without a truck! Then we found a guy here in Dayton that fixes appliances so we were able to get a side-by-side refrigerator/freezer and a gas stove for $400. They're both in fine shape so we felt good about it. We also found a nice guy to put on a new roof for us. The house is 3 stories (Russ insists it's 2 1/2 but to me it's the same) so the roof is quite high and it's very steep. Russ could do it but we would have to rent a bunch of equipment and then Russ would be spending a lot of time doing the roof instead of other things that need to be done. The roof needs to be stripped down to the nearly 100-year old boards, plywood applied followed by felt then shingles, all very high up. The first estimate we got for it was nearly $24,000- shock! That's half what we paid for the house! (It was a good deal for the house but still that's a lot of money for a new roof.) After several phone calls, we got the name of this guy from our banker.
Today, Wednesday, we finally got started in earnest on the house. Russ spent the day plumbing. Theft of copper pipe is a plague around here and our house wasn't an exception. We hope to have water by tomorrow. I spent the day ripping out the kitchen floor and walls. It's dirty, back-breaking work. But we're excited to see what we can make of it!

Photos from the move

This first picture is loading the truck in Logan, Utah. The second is our "rig" as we stopped at a rest stop in Wyoming. The feel of the steering wheel, the length of the whole rig , and the sound of the diesel engine really makes me feel like a trucker. The slow speed going up hills adds to the whole perception, too.

On our way!

We moved into Utah in a 29-foot horse trailer pulled by a pickup truck. We have now moved out of Utah in a 26-foot rental truck pulling our car on a trailer. Our friend, Jim Christiansen and his daughter Sadie were generous and helpful enough, after having stored our food storage for a year, to load it into their pickup and bring it to us at the storage facility. The next day, we fully expected to do all of the loading of the rental truck by ourselves, just the two of us. We also were unsure that we would be able to fit everything in. As we started pulling stuff out of the storage space preparing to figure out what and how to load, we were pleasantly surprised to look up into the smiling faces of our sweet neighbors (actually, former neighbors now), Kim and Donnett Hawkes. They were a cheerful, hardworking blessing to our day! A little later, Wayne and Diane May along with Brian Chambers showed up to help, too. Although the weather leading up to this day had been quite springlike, mostly wet and cold, the day for loading was just what we had prayed for- sunny and lovely! The Lord does bless us in so many ways- sometimes through the efforts of others who are willing to listen to and follow Him. We have benefitted greatly from God's love. We acknowledge that and give thanks.