Solstice Work Party #3

"Technology" issues kept this posting from getting up the other day, so here you go. More pictures from the amazing work party on June 20th.

Here Christophe and Josh work hard to put together our new grill in time for the big BBQ dinner. Miraculously they succeeded!

Truth in pictures! The deck is DOWN!!!


Bethanie and Laurel did a great job making this pathway on the side of our house, once filled with weeds.



And on the Monday after the work party, we hired a crew to take the old asbestos shingle siding (CAB) off our house. What a difference it makes! "Soon" we'll scrape and refinish the original cedar siding (the white stuff), put siding on the rest of the house, and paint it all. We can't wait!

2009 Summer Solstice Work Party - 2

Round 2 of pictures from the work party/ birthday party. It is truly amazing how much we got done - tore down the old deck, gutted the old garage, built a pathway on the side of the house, installed radiant floor heating, built a wall, weeded, cleaned up, and much much more!

Here's Mason taking the old deck to its new home: the dumpster.

Andrew, I think, actually enjoyed tearing down the walls in the old garage (our future bedroom). The masks were definitely necessary given the blown-in insulation we found in the walls...

Laurel, though she looks a bit despondent here, really got into it. Here she is bagging up one of the dozens of bags full of the insulation. We hope to reuse this stuff in the attic....

And what would this project be without a before picture....

2009 Summer Solstice Work Party - 1

On June 20, 2009, friends and family converged on our little Pearl Street home to do some major deconstruction (and a little reconstruction, too). Thanks so much for the hardy souls who came out to help get our house a few steps closer to "complete." I'm glad we all had a blast, too!

Here is Corey in prime form tearing down our old (horribly built) deck. One of the first things the inspector said when we bought the house was "Ya, I'd tear this down. I mean you two could hang out on it, but I wouldn't throw a party out here."

Clark Rider shows us that cyclists have arm muscles, too!

My mom pitched in to help tame our neglected garden. Now we can actually tell the difference between our lettuce and the grass!


Here, the Dads puzzle over how to install our kitchen radiant floor heating. In the end they got it in. Nice work gents!