A New Chapter for Dad's House

Almost two and a half years ago, I ended a blog post with this " I am very happy to have this done though. There are some odds n ends left in the house, but it’s mainly cleaned out (but not clean!)."  It was in reference to cleaning out my parents' house. (You can read the whole post here.)

Now we're doing the odds n ends and the cleaning!  Really cleaning.  Hubby (with some M & L help) has taken out two closets and part of a wall, pulled up part of a floor and replaced it, made a water line to the fridge, moved the hot water tank out of the bathroom and moved the washer and dryer from the kitchen to its' new spot. 

We have a new dumpster, but not as big as the first.  All that demolition is going in - in with all the things we saved before and now aren't quite sure why.  After I left yesterday to pick up M., Hubby and L pulled up all the carpet and threw it away.

What's left? Well, Hubby would know better than I - he's good at this!  Replace some windows, take some furniture to an antique store if any family doesn't want it, sell the deep freeze, maybe move a doorway, replace the front door, fix some more floor, add in a kitchen cabinet, majorly clean, clean the cabinets and paint them inside and out (my job), have the fireplace checked, put in carpeting and linoleum, and anything else that needs done!

This project is perhaps physically and financially harder, but not quite as emotionally difficult as the first.  The hardest parts - picking the coins up in Dad's room and knowing they were ones dropped out of his jeans pockets behind his bed and cleaning out all the scraps of papers in Dad's spice rack.  The rack had absolutely no spices, but it was a good holder for all those papers written in Dad's handwriting - the four of us and Aunt's birthdays, our phone numbers and Dr's numbers, a recipe or two - and a few business cards from people who had fixed things for Dad.

It does make me wonder why we didn't do this for Mom and Dad ten years ago.  Dad probably wouldn't have let us!