Some Volunteers!

First thing this morning, Ornery and CW went out in our garage and cut shim strips for the bathroom walls to help level them out. When we got to the house, that was the first order of business--squaring up the walls.  The master bathroom tub was crooked, but there wasn't any easy fix for that, so they will fudge just a little with the level of the tiles on the first course.  The hall bathtub was considerably off kilter, so they ended up taking it out and putting cement backer board shims under it too!  Naturally there was a little bit of plumbing involved in this project as well, and much of the previous work that was done incorrectly (and possibly to a grave consequence later) was corrected in the process.

to the left is the bottom edge of the tub standing on its end in the doorway.

While CW was working on that, Ornery was putting up backer board and green board in the master bathroom.  They reached a point where they needed to drill holes for the wiring for a GFCI receptacle.  That is what is happening here...

Elizabeth and Michael came around 11:00 and helped us a lot!  Elizabeth cleaned out the inside of the laundry cupboards and washed the fronts of all the cabinets in the garage.

Michael got to use his manly muscles swinging the sledge hammer to break up a corner of the drive so we can make it more level.

Then, a friend they worked with at CompUSA several years ago also came to give a hand.  He wasn't quite as adept with the sledge, but he managed to send me inside when the concrete started flying!

Elizabeth came in and helped me paint the front door while the guys worked on breaking up a bunch of sheet rock and bagging it.  They also tried to break up the old tub surrounds, but the material was too tough to just break.

While the rest of us ate lunch, Michael and Jeff worked in the back yard raking up leaves into big piles, pulling out ivy vines, collecting sticks and branches and putting them in a pile.  They all left at about 2:00 or so.

Ornery's mom decided it would be a good time to come check out the new place, so she came over at about 3:00.  We visited for a while after she got the grand tour, then she noticed the big pile of leaves next to the patio and offered to bag it up for us.  I helped her and we got 5 or 6 bags from just that one pile.  It wasn't until we were cleaning up that we saw the other piles other places in the yard!

Chuck put in the GFCI recep in the master bath, then hooked up to a double outlet some hot wires that were behind a blank plate in the living room.  The plate was just stuck to the wall with some paint--no screws at all.  Rather unnerving!

At 7:00 Ornery and I stopped by the house then went to Lowe's for the last run of the day.  He dropped me off at the house, then went back to 507 for another short round of work.  His energy was flagging severely so I doubt they will work too late.