The renovation crew got started today, taking up the floor in the foyer and taking out some of the old insulation in the crawlspace. Before we could see anything up close because there was less than a foot of clearance in the crawlspace,rotting and termite damage to the sill plate were proposed as potential contributors to the sloping floors. It sure looks like that played a large role. Here’s some documentation of the damage.

Since she keeps posting pictures of me I’ll have to return the favor in my first post to the blog. My beautiful wife:

Chris mowed the lawn! His first time mowing a lawn that he owned.

Continuous progress on the back yard.

What a stud 🙂

So after one week ownership and progress on the house the view I showed in the last post looks like this:

Progress? Well no, not from this view. However, if you go into the little door under the stairs you’ll find:

A crawlspace completely devoid of asbestos! There was a giant furnace here, coated in the stuff. You can kind of see the indent.

The backyard is coming along slowly but surely. After work today I dug for about an hour and 15 minutes in the 80 degree heat and I was completely wiped at the end. Chris and I walked downtown for dinner and I barely made it back.

In Durham news, anyone looking to start a new business can apply for a spot in the world’s smallest office! Located inside The Beyu Cafe (which I really like). That’s about all we know about it, so you should google it to find out more!

Can you spot the clues that contractors have been here?

We found a lot more trash today, including an old hubcap.

To give you an idea, yesterday we’d gotten just about a foot past the leaning wooden beams.

Since the dump isn’t open on Sundays we just left everything we pulled up in piles. Ideally I’ll come back tomorrow with Dad’s truck and take everything to the dump. We’ll see how time works out though.

Definitely the most exciting discovery was the pecan tree. Yesterday I though the leaves looked like pecan but today we found bunches of rotten pecans as we cleared under the tree. Jackpot. You can see Chris cleared the ivy to about shoulder height but he didn’t have the right tools to take out the trunk. Who knew ivy could get that thick? He stripped some of the bark in an attempt to kill it, and we’ll have to come back with a hatchet or axe.

We got permission to go out this weekend and do some cleaning/clearing of the back yard even though we don’t close until Monday.

You see there’s quite a lot to do.

Our friend the tree snake.

The view from the back of the yard looking at the house.

Trash we collected.

This is what we were left with at the end of the day. Not bad for a few hours, but there’s still a lot to do.

The car full of yard waste.

It made for the quite the uncomfortable ride.