Drywall is soooo much better than plaster and lath, but it's still a bitch to put up on ceilings. It's especially sucky when the ceilings are a 8'9" and you've only got two short-ish ladders and arms like toothpicks.

Behold, underneath the cardboard lies a NEW BATHTUB. It graces our newly framed and re-floored bathroom. Yesterday was spent quite productively, putting insulation up, drilling a hole through 8 inches of brick for the vent fan, and drywalling the ceiling of the main bedroom.

We've nearly filled our tiny little back yard with debris from the house. Since there's no room for a dumpster on our street, it's gonna be interesting to get rid of this stuff little-by-little over the course of a hundred garbage days.

Aaaaaand post-dirt. Demolition is filthy work anyway, and when your house is pushing 80 years old, it can get really nasty. We've been stopping by after work each day to get a bit extra done, then riding home to the apartment to clean up and sleep. Repeat as necessary, i.e. every day.

A little picture of Jennifer pre-dirt.

Behind the vanity were the accumulated razors of what seemed like 10,000 shaves over the course of decades. They had been crammed through the little holes in the back of the steel and were seemingly suspended in midair as they had cut into the lath on the back sided of the opposite wall. Tetanus anyone?

Our first week in the house involved a fair amount of smashing. As you can see, the bathtub proved a worthy adversary.

Week one of homeownership is down. So is about 2 tons of plaster, drywall, lath and the like. While the initial phases of destruction are great, it gets to be kind of a drag when you actually have to take the stuff and put it somewhere. Our miniscule back yard is now brimming with debris. At some point in the frenzy of work, I'll be able to post some pictures, though not today. I'm now off to the house to try to replace the sewer pipe.

Cheerio

Jennifer and I have our hobby all squared away for the next indefinite amount of time. Guess what it is! Give up? It's called HOMEOWNERSHIP! We took posession of the house last Friday, all went according to plan, and started pulling up the carpet soon after we had congratulated ourselves with a dinner of mediocre Ethiopian food. Saturday involved a fair amount of smashing, pulling down plaster, demolishing the bathroom, and the highlight, moving a 350 pound tub down the stairs. Just call me "Crusher". I'll post some lovely pictures this evening after I return from the house. I had an inkling that it would be this crazy to actually own a house, but the full weight of it doesn't hit until the first water pipe starts leaking, this first time due to my poor soldering skills.

It's been a long time since I've posted, mostly because I've been lazy, but also because life has been busy. I'm now working at a bike shop here in Philly, Trophy Bikes. THis has been a good move because I am able to get more hours than at EMS and also am having a lot more fun working there. Bikes are good. My main problem with the shop is that it is rediculously tiny, about a third of my dad's shop size and about a half of what Grand Performance had. The customer turnover is tremendous though, and we sell a preposterous number of folding bicycles. I guess it makes sense given the size of the store.

We've spent the past few weekends goofing off in preferation for the upcoming rennovate-athon when we take posession of our new house on FRIDAY JUNE 9TH!!! We do the walk through, check stuff out one last time, then head to the realtor's office and do the dirty deed. It's gonna be awesome not to be dealing with the whole real-estate sales aspect of it and to finally get into the place. It seems like we've been making plans on the house for ever and now we're finally going to be doing something about it. Friday night we'll just poke around in the house, and see how everything goes, then begin the smashing in earnest sometime saturday. The bathroom is the first to go, we'll chop and cut and such, expose the plumbing and try to figure out how to replace the leaky sewer stack, a barrel of laughs for sure. We've got the main goal of getting a workable bathroom by the time that we actually have to move in completely, July 1st. I'll certainly have to post more on the world of home-ownership this weekend. Wish us luck.