30 yards of clean

This weekend the goal was to get the house and shop cleaned out. In preparation, we ordered a 30 yard dumpster and had it delivered prior to our arrival. When we arrived, we found that the power was turned off to the shop. For whatever reason, the shop and the house are on 2 separate electric meters. When I set up an account with the electrical company, I notified them of both meters and asked that they both be added to the account. Didn’t happen. The prior owner had the power turned off (as they should) and since the shop’s meter wasn’t attached to the account, the electric company turned it off. I was bummed at first until I realized that now would be the perfect time to swap out the old fuse box with a new electrical panel.

Saturday morning we got into cleaning mode. I opened the door up on the dumpster so we could start stacking things nicely towards the front. As I went to open the door, I realized that this was one crappy dumpster. Of the 3 pins that lock the door closed, 0 worked. Where the sides met the bottom of the can, it was rusted through almost all the way around. It still holds 30 yards so whatever. We stacked and loaded the dumpster meticulously so we could get the most for our money. I’ve seen dumpsters loaded haphazardly and knew that if we did so, we wouldn’t get everything to fit.

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I started in the shop and Oceana started in the house. We cleared out the small stuff first and then helped each other to carry the big stuff out next to the can. Since the power was off at the shop, I strung some extension cords together from the house hooked up to some LED work lights to get the shop lit up. We ended up keeping very little of the stuff that was in the house and shop. One antique dresser remained with a few hand and yard tools. Everything else got loaded up. In the clearing out process, we found another 17 moth balls. I’m glad to get rid of those things.

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Since we were trying to save on space, we broke down all of the big pieces of furniture or cabinetry. I’d drag them just inside of the can and smash them with a sledge hammer. That kept all the mess and debris in the dumpster. Items like the love seat and the tub from the bathroom went in whole and were packed around. After smashing and loading everything, we still had a bit of room left.

On to the flooring. I want to get back down to the original pine floors. Right now they’re covered by this glued down vinyl planking. The planking actually looked almost nice. Had the floor under it been prepped properly, it would have looked fine and may have been able to stay. But it wasn’t. So using a large floor scraper I scraped up the planks while Oceana loaded them into the dumpster.

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There was still some room left so I turned my sights towards the master bathroom. We are going to end up changing the configuration of the bathroom so since there’s a dumpster outside, now would be a great time to start the demo. We had already removed the tub and vanity but the closet walls remained. While taking out the closet walls, I realized that behind the drywall on the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom was exterior siding. That tells me the bathroom was an addition onto the bedroom. And the bedroom was an addition onto the original main house. Pretty cool.

The next morning after our cowboy coffee, we made a Home Depot run to pick up parts for the new electrical panel. I settled on a 100 amp panel with a main power disconnect. While there we picked up all the other odds and ends to get the panel installed. After confirming the power was dead to the panel, I undid the wiring for the old fuse box and then opened up the wall so I could have room for mounting the new panel. Based on the location the conduit came through the wall and into the box, I was limited in mounting options. I ended up drilling out a hole in the back of the box so that I could get the box mounted halfway where I wanted.

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Most of the original wiring runs were too short to reach the new breakers so I replaced them with new wire back to their first junction boxes. I unclustered some of the shop’s wiring in the process but I’ll need to spend a few more days getting it truly squared away. There was one two gang junction box that had nearly 12 wires going to it and was fed from 2 different home runs. Craziness.

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With a little bit of time left this weekend, I wanted to investigate the sink hole in the side yard. I had walked across this area and felt a little bounce. That tells me that there is plywood somewhere below all that sand. After about two hours of digging, I finally uncovered the original septic tank to the property. Under the sand I found that it was covered with pieces of plywood, plastic, shower liner, logs, and a bunch of other stuff. It appears to have been decommissioned years ago and that the lid had somewhat recently collapsed. If I had to speculate, I’d guess some unlucky person drove on it and it gave in. I left it opened up so that I could research what to do with the old tank.

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Lots of progress this weekend. Getting both the shop and the house cleared out now allows us to focus on what needs to be done to get the house fixed up.

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