Welcome to the Disaster Zone

Messes. Definitely a part of life. Whether it be things like dirtying the stack of clean plates by using them for dinner or jumping in mud puddles, mess happens. You clean things up, and they inevitably get dirty again. Anyone who has lived with me for longer than a day knows that I am a neat freak. I hate dust and dirt on my floors. I don't like scum in my tub or residue left on my cups after washing them. One of the most difficult parts of this whole house business is the mess. We clean up as much as we can after a weekend of work, but inevitably leave a mess. It's all I can do sometimes not to get down on my hands and knees with a dustpan and broom and leave no dust speck behind!

After last weekend, things didn't look too bad in the house. When we got to New Castle this past weekend, my heart broke just a little. And my inner neat freak cried. 

That was the master bedroom on Saturday morning. It was like walking though a disaster zone. It looked like a flood had wiped out the upstairs of the farmhouse. I thought that the insulation we shoveled the last two weeks was bad... this was 10x worse. This was a combination of the nasty old insulation, fiberglass insulation, cardboard and 60 years of coal dust. 

Dad had taken out the ceilings in the master bedroom and one of the spare bedrooms. The attic space was filled with the stuff. Thankfully we had a dumpster delivered Saturday morning, and we were able to bag the nasty and throw it out the window. Between the plaster we had been bagging the past two weeks, the insulation and the fiberglass/coal dust all over the floor, we filled the entire dumpster. 

We were also able to get rid of the old carpets covering the floor in the Blue Room and the other spare room (heck, I can't figure out what to call that room; it has no distinguishing features). That's the carpet in the dumpster, not a dead body :) 

The carpet removal revealed beautiful wood floors underneath. They need a good cleaning, but they are solid wood and in great condition!

The heat vents in the floor are really unique in this house. Some of them are broken, but I'm hoping that maybe we can find some antique replacements for those and clean up the ones that are currently there. 

I think that the worst part of this weekend was spending time in the attic. Since the ceiling in the Blue Room isn't bad, we decided not to tear it down. We had to pull out all of the insulation above this room by climbing into the rafters of the attic, balancing on the beams,  and stuffing it into bags, all while trying not to fall through the ceiling or stab yourself on the nails in the roof. It was hot, uncomfortable, itchy, and cramped. I can't wait until this part is finished. 

Just for laughs, here is a picture of what we looked like after a day of work in the house with all of the coal dust. It took a long time to get clean, and I now have an official set of work clothes, but hopefully we won't need to get this dirty again. I don't think my OCD cleaning could take another round of that!