Tag: Upstairs downstairs

House Next Door: Upstairs Room, Take 2

I went over to the free house today to clean out another room. This particular room we had already cleaned out, though not it’s closet. But, when people were going through the house to pick out things they wanted, this room became the dumping ground for all the sorting and it managed to get full of stuff again. So I tackled the room again and also did the closet, which turned out to be a lot bigger and roomier than I first realized.

My two youngest came over to help. I set the eleven year old on fan and lamp duty. He found some fans and figured out which ones worked and then came and set them up for me. I opened a couple windows and it stayed decent. There is a kitchen upstairs that we haven’t tackled yet and the eleven year was poking around in there and realized there was a window unit AC in the window. He turned it on and it worked! But I had him turn it off cause I’m still paying the electric bill. But maybe when we tackle the kitchen and bathroom up there we can put on the AC. Though the open windows and fans do also help with the smell. I don’t know, we’ll see. The boys were a great help carrying keepables downstairs for me and they had fun poking through the stuff.

Here’s the closet.

This upstairs is considered the 2nd floor, but there’s a walk out basement where we have the trailer, so when I throw the trash out the window, I’m throwing it down three floors.

Here’s the window I wrestle all these bags through.

With my dog admiring the view.

I squeeze the trash bag through the window and then have to balance the bag on the little overhang and scoot it over so that it will fall down into the trailer. I was about to ask my little boys to help me with this, but then images of them leaning too far out the window made me change my mind. It feels a little precarious.

While we were cleaning my boys also discovered a snake skin in the room I was cleaning.

Which did not make me feel real comfortable cleaning out the deep dark closet. But, God has been merciful and I have not come across wildlife and bugs and snakes yet.

We are getting close to our one year anniversary of starting this project. I would love to have everything at least cleaned out by that milestone. We’ll see!

Free House: Getting Easier

Andy and I went over to the free House to work today and I have to say, I think this is easiest session we’ve had so far. Highlights were no poop or pee and no rotten food. Woohoo!

We are in the upstairs now.

So apparently, when our neighbor first moved into this house it was in the 80s and she rented the upstairs from the elderly woman who lived there. There used to be a stairway that went up the outside of the house. Here’s what’s left of it.

There was a door which was obviously not original to the house.

The room we cleaned today must have been her living room. Here’s the before.

We found some interesting things today, including this giant safe thats not going to be fun to get back down the stairs.

If you’d like an electric hotdog cooker, I can help you out.

We actually found a lot of vintage, odd small appliances, all in their original packaging.

Since we cleaned the hallway last time, we were able to throw things out the upstairs hall windows instead of hauling everything down the stairs, which also made everything easier. We could have kept cleaning but our trailer was completely full again.

Here’s the after picture.

We’ve been talking a lot more about what we’re going to do with the house. On days when we are feeling poor and overwhelmed we tend to feel like just selling it. But then we revive and think of how amazing it would be to have it fixed up and available for use. That is still the plan, but sometimes it feels a little impossible. So we push on, one step at a time. We’ll do everything we can and then when we hit a roadblock we’ll reassess. For now, there’s lots of cleaning to be done, yardwork, and several repair projects we can do with minimal funds, so no roadblocks in the near future.

Free House: Moving Upstairs

It’s been a while since I’ve been on here. We had one of the busiest holiday seasons I’ve ever had. It was a lot of fun, lots of good memories, great time with my kids, and we ended with the wedding of my oldest son! Then all the kids that came home for Christmas left, school started back up, and this weekend is the first time that I’m feeling like I can catch my breath a bit. It’s been a great day, I got my grocery shopping done first thing this morning, assigned my kids some chores, and then Andy and I went next door to tackle the next project. We worked three hours, came home, showered, and now I’m looking at the rest of the afternoon and evening with nothing on the schedule. Woohoo!

Today’s clean out was a lot more physically intense than normal. We have finally moved upstairs.

Which means everything has to come down those stairs, then you have to climb back up those stairs again to get back to work. We tossed lighter things down the stairs, but we escorted the big giant trash bags. At the top of the stairs is a rather large landing that had been turned into a bedroom.

We filled our trailer.

And then still had lots of stuff to fill another trailer load.

So, this is how far we got today, both of us working. I feel a little bit like an archeologist as I try to figure out the time line for the house. I found mail on the floor upstairs from 1999, which seems to be a significant year as I really haven’t found much mail or newspapers from before then. The upstairs ceiling is lath and plaster, and that started to fall apart at some point in time, so they put a cheap drop ceiling over the lath and plaster. Then I think enough of the original ceiling collapsed that it weighed down the drop ceiling and made that fall as well. So, we were cleaning up a lot of house debris today. As usual, I am always amazed at how much stuff can be crammed into one small space.

In other news, one of my older daughters went through some of the clothes that have been hanging in closets and tried washing them to see if they’d come clean, and they did! She is an eclectic dresser, so she had fun finding some things. This silk suit didn’t fit. Not sure what I’m going to do with it. But it’s clean!