Manual Labor

I spent this weekend in Rhode Island with Chris's family. It was nice to do the New England thing and see everyone, but I was more excited for Monday.

Monday was going to be manual labor day. We left Rhode Island around 8:30 am so that we could meet dad at my new house. Monday was the day we would do a few things.

1. Check out the hiking trails in our backyard. Yes, you heard me, there are trails in my backyard.

2. Introduce Tug to the new house and let him sniff all over our massive needing to be mowed lawn and our teeny tiny house.

3. DEMOLITION!!!!!!


Ok, so having hiking trails in the woods in your backyard? Um. Effing awesome. They don't go on for miles and miles but they go on enough for a good dog walking and a good little burst of "into the woods" time. Tug enjoyed thoroughly and even more-so enjoyed the big lawn to pee all over. But me? I was most excited for the demo to begin.

Our big plan is to get into the house by the end of July. Thankfully for us, very little needs to be done. The house was built in 1950 but has new windows, roof, driveway, siding, all the big stuff. What it DOES need is new molding and new doors. And this means we got to rip things apart. Nothing better than that!! There is something so therapeutic about hammering and pulling and throwing around big pieces of wood. My job was to wait on the deck for the hunks of wood and hammer all the nails out so the wood could go to the dump. And dammit I enjoyed it thoroughly!! Another thing I thoroughly enjoyed? Listening to my dad exclaim how well built this house is. That there are a zillion nails holding everything together and the walls are built like a fort.

You may not be able to appreciate this as much as I can. But my dad is an electrician by trade and can build anything. Anything involved with home improvement...he is a pro. But his favorite pastime is bitching about how poorly everything is built and how HE is going to have to fix all of it. So the fact that this lil' house in the woods that I bought happens to be to HIS standards of "well built" is so many years of redemption rolled into one, you can't even begin to understand. He even said that MY house was built better than HIS!!

SCORE!!!!

So I have to admit, I am thrilled with my little house. It's so damn cute, the property is so damn amazing, and pretty soon we will make it our own. It was not built with crappy drywall that will fall apart the minute I hang a picture, it was not built by some massive development company in one month so that it looks all fancy but is actually made of toothpicks....it is a good house. A good solid house with lots of possibility and I love it.
That and all the manual labor that goes with it. :)