What a day today. We had six Tech students as demolition crew. They all showed up right on-time. After some instruction and goal setting, they went to work.

The crew started right away with the removal of the old appliances and movable objects. Soon thereafter the cabinets (which we deemed unsalvageable, with the exception of the cabinet door handles) were taken down and disposed of. The walls and ceilings were next. The assignment was to remove the plaster and lath. The studs and wall structure should remain.

This is where it got very dusty. All of the crew worked with respirators on and we refreshed the pre-filters once throughout the day.

The crew in the kitchen split up to start working on other rooms. Two remained in the kitchen, two went to the living room and two went to the dining room.

By the end of the day we had a fully gutted kitchen, mostly gutted living room (see separate post about the beehive we encountered 🙂 , and partially gutted dining and guest room.

The debris that was collected throughout this day filled one 30 cubic yard for about 80+% and a second one for about 25%.

All in all a tremendously successful day. Tomorrow two of the six students will return to help us and we also expect some friends and family to show up. This is such an exciting project!

Time for bed.

We got the key this morning, which on its own was very funny, because none of the doors were actually locked. At around 9:30 we arrived at our home and started to set things up for the rest of the three days.

The plan is that we have a crew of 6 student from a local technical college help us with the removal of all the remaining loose stuff that is not ours and that we don’t want and then to remove all the kitchen cabinets and remove all the lath-and-plaster from the downstairs walls (interior and exterior-facing walls).

Anne kept us strict today to get the logistics setup. I personally would have liked to start the demo right-there and then, but I know tomorrow will be the day the walls come down 🙂

Here is an overview of what we found in the house that needs to be removed:

• 5 TVs
• 1 computer monitor
• 1 old fridge (also a newer one, but we’re keeping that one for now)
• 1 super nasty stove
• 3 natural gas-powered space heaters

We also found 2 gasoline powered lawn mowers, one of them even runs (I did not try the other one)

Can’t wait for tomorrow, I sure hope these tech students show up.

Big day for us. We finalized the purchase of our Dream Vacation Home, also known as a fixer-upper house on Kenwood Street.

The house has been a rental property over many years, the prior owner lacked respect for the property by not maintaining it, therefore the tenants did not respect it either. This is the type of home we love to rehab. The picture above is probably the most flattering image of the home. Below is the video of the walk-through the day before we closed on the purchase of the house.

Hello and Welcome to our Vacation Home project website.

Some people think of vacation as a way to relax and enjoy time together, away from the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life. Anne and I agree that vacation should be about spending quality time together, but we don’t do the ‘relax’-part very well. Instead we like to remodel homes.

We therefore decided to buy a fixer-upper home in Minnesota and play with it.

Keep an eye out on this page to see the most recent developments, the project has only just started and we are excited to share the planning, the progress, and the results with you.

-Edwin