Welcome to Kenilworth

Praise God!  We closed on Kenilworth last Thursday.  Spent 2 hours with the previous owners on Saturday as they showed us things around the house and yard.  Got possession on Monday and have been hard at work all week!

The girls and I cleaned all the flowerbeds out, moved hundreds of bricks, pulled numerous gigantic dead weeds, dragged away the old wooded braces from the where the boys were digging, and made a huge burn pile.  The boys have been busy digging the egress to the basement.  They've gone down about 3 feet and have another 1 1/2 or so to go.  We hit an unexpected concrete apron that was about 2 feet down.  It appears to go around the entire house!  It's sticks out about 2 feet and is about 10 inches thick.  Guess we get have to use a Jack Hammer!  Got to get it out of there to install the new window!

That was at the beginning of the week!  Then Friday, the older kids and I made headway cleaning out the very dusty and disgusting crawlspace.  Because the house is sagging on one side, we have to jack it up to stabilize it.  Yesterday, Glenn, Luke, Alix, and Noah were able to make both of the new support beams, which go under the house, and dig the holes for the jacks.  So as of last night, 3 of the 6 jacks are in place!  Next, we need to install the 2nd support beam and dig the last 3 holes for the remaining jacks.

That second picture shows dust from the crawlspace that came off Glenn and the kids when they stomped their feet!

While they were in the crawlspace, the little girls played in the tree house and on the swing set, got generally very dirty running around barefoot, and I pruned 2 1/2 of the 9 apple trees, and other various outside things.  The pruning was actually a lot easier than I thought, thanks to those great folks who share their knowledge on the internet.

Glenn and I also took out one of the lengths of sagging split rail fence, and Kate and I removed part of another.  We bought 5 wrought iron trellises for the rose bushes which now needed new supportive structures, since they had been sprawling on the listing fence.

Flowers are blooming!

This last picture shows a section of that split rail fence we took out...

Tomorrow - dig the remaining holes in the crawlspace and finish jacking the house, prune some more apple trees, move a large rick of firewood, tear out some old shelving in the garage.  And maybe start taking out the shelves in the dining room closet which we are going to demo...

Nope, no painting yet...