Flip House 1...Part 4

Chapter 4....Time To Take The Screen Room Down Hello everyone. Ok, before I start tonight's story I have a couple of questions. Just to let you know Mike and I have moved to the 2nd house but we have one more week to finish this house. So before we get started on this house: 1. Do you all like French Doors or Sliding doors? 2. A driveway and a circular drive or widen driveway and take out circular drive? Remember these are small houses. 3. Favorite flooring for main living area of house? 4. Kitchen styles? We are trying to appeal to the most buyers. Ok, the date is October 5 and the garage is full of trash. It's time to call in the dumpster. I called the same company that we used years ago. They usually give us a discount because we load it so quickly. Here is the garage And It seems crazy that we already have this much stuff. This house is definitely a 2 dumpster house. The dumpster is dropped off and Mike and I load it in about 2 hours. Yes we are crazy, lol. I called the company back to pick it up and he thought I was joking. Our first 15 yard dumpster is full. We also called our old Tree guy to see if he was still around and he is. Very cool. We told him we have 2 houses for him to clear. Mike and I like to start fresh on houses and re plant. Of course we will save all of the big trees and palms. We just get rid of the overgrowth. These houses are too small to have too many stuff. I think people forget that these plants grow and need to be trimmed, lol. Mike 2, the tree man, comes out for an estimate. He can be here tomorrow. Woo hoo. The next day Mike and I have to finish up in the kitchen. We have to take out the old back wall and so that it can be replaced. We will call in one of our Sheetrock guys to see if he can do the finish work for us. Mike and I can do sheet rock but we really don't like it. What would take us a week to do a sheet rock man can do in a couple of days. Sometimes it's worth it to hire a professional. Here is the kitchen wall we want to take out. I start to take the wall down. It is almost done. Mike 2 shows up to start work on the trees and bushes. here is what the house looks like before he starts. There are 2 palms behind this bush and we will try to keep them as long as they aren't too close to the house. And, by the front door. And our lovely cactus. This was very close to the property line so we talked to the neighbor about taking it out. He has no problem with it. It's always good to ask first and not stir up any trouble with your neighbors. Mike 2 shows up and starts cutting stuff down And using the wood chipper which is a really cool machine. Mike is outside with them busy taking all kinds of things off the house. There are lights and screws all over plus some kind of display things. Here he is taking down one of the displays. We also went around the yard and the gardens and picked up about 50 one foot curved cement garden blocks. Some were buried in the lawn and had to be pulled out. There was also an old desk and some broken stools behind the bushes. Wonder how long that was there? While Mike and I were doing that the original owner's son and his friend showed up. He took some of the lights. I tried to talk them into taking the displays and the cement blocks but they didn't want those. Back on the inside I started to work on the bathtub wall. The tile was the easy part. Now it's time to break out the wall so we can replace the sheet rock. Just starting to break through and what a mess it is. Outside they got the truck loaded up and headed over to the other house. Mike 2 will be back tomorrow to take the 2 big palms down. We wanted to save them unfortunately they were too close to the house and they were rotted. The next day Mike 2 brings a stump grinder back and gets to work. He also gets ready to take the palms down. He is going to back his truck up and cut the palm about 1/3 of the way up and drop it into the back of his truck. oh yeah this sounds like one of those "are you crazy?" moments. If this works it should be really cool, as long as he doesn't flip his truck. Here we go. Backing the truck up to the palms. Cutting and dropping the first. Now we have people on the street watching this. It's not every day you get a show like this, lol. And the second one coming down. After all of that we were only able to keep 2 palms and a lime tree. Now that all of the bushes are gone we can finally see the house. After that was done Mike and I went over to the other house to check on the stump grinding. This is a great machine to get all of the stumps and roots ground down. All looks good. Mike 2 said he would take the refrigerator, dishwasher, and the laminate floor that is through out the living area. Very cool. Maybe we can get the other house dismantled before we get in. The next day. Today Mike 2 and his friends are supposed to take down the screen room. It is an old rusted screen room and we want the house to be fresh and new. Anyway, Mike 2 offered to take it down if he got the scrap. Sounds like a win win. While Mike and I wait for them to show up we start tearing down the old shed on the side of the house. First we have to take everything out of the shed and put it into the garage until our second dumpster shows up. Yes we are ready for a second one. Thankfully the owners took out all the furniture out of the house and the pots and table on the seawall. Originally I thought they were leaving all of that stuff. I thought I would have a big yard/garage sale and let people take anything out of the house they wanted. Great idea but that was a "what the heck was I thinking moment." We don't have time for that. Anyway, back to the shed. We are being very careful about taking stuff out. There is a lot of glass, wood and bottles of stuff(?) in here. Taking the sides off the shed. We are almost finished and Mike 2 and his guys show up to take the screen room down. The screen room is over 30 years old and it is pretty rough. Where we are located it isn't necessary to have a screen room. Our waterfront community is the farthest out in the gulf in our county which means we have no mangroves, we get great breezes, and we have no bugs. That is the biggest reason Mike and I like this neighborhood the best. Mike 2 and his guys bring their tools around back and get to work. Mike 2 is planning on unscrewing everything and piling the metal in his trailer to scrap it. The big problem with that is all of the screws are rusted and can't be unscrewed which means they have to knock the whole screen room down. Now a job that shouldn't have been too bad for 3 guys has turned into a bear of a job. Time to take the screen room off.(that is the planter Mike and I will empty and take out later) First section coming down. Mike and I end up helping them with this job. Mike helps with the sledgehammer, could you have guessed, lol? and I help load up their trailer. The big section is down. By now we have attracted an audience from across the canal. She is out there taking pictures, lol. This turned out to be a job Mike and I could have never done on our own. The metal part is still on the house. They have to be careful taking this last part down. It could crash through our windows. Getting the metal down. The last part is the covered area of the porch area. This is a big heavy piece of metal. All 4 guys are needed for this. Here they are getting the big part down. Thankfully no one got hurt. Mike gives Mike 2 some money even though that wasn't part of the deal. This job turned out to be much bigger than any of us thought. After Mike 2 and his guys leave our second dumpster shows up. We get it almost filled with everything in the garage and then we start on the back of the house. Mike works on taking down more wires and lights while I empty that big planter that was next to the screen room. Wow- that was an exhausting day. I think we will sleep well tonight. We have been in the house for 8 days ande are moving right along. There are alot of behind the scenes that I never get pictures of. We spend a lot of time tearing things apart. It is kind of obvious considereing we already got a second dumpster. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter of our story. Next I will wrap up everything we did in October. Lisa