Fire!

Fire seems to be popping up as a common theme in this renovation.

You might remember when my dad got the blow torch out and set our carpet on fire day 2 of demolition

Good times...


Or, while examining our old furnace, our geothermal installer informed us he is surprised our house hadn't burned to the ground yet. Yikes! Good thing our old furnace is gone and we have our new system in place already.



Then on Saturday we started a fire... a big one!

If you haven't noticed there are huge overgrown bushes in front and behind our house.

....Or, rather, there were huge overgrown bushes in front and behind our house 

Unfortunately I missed the day my dad came over with the bobcat and pulled them out so I don't have any pictures of that process but here they are sitting on our burn pile ready to be burned. 

Along with ridding ourselves of just about the only landscaping our home came with, we also finished up tearing out the last remaining interior studs in the house and part of the kitchen and bathroom subfloor.

Then we placed all the wood scrap around the bushes on the burn pile.  Setting up the perfect conditions for one big fire.

It was ready to be burned...And I knew just the Eagle Scout to take care of it.

He was so funny.  As he was about at this point in the process, he turn around and looked at me, eyebrows raised, mischievous look on his face, and said "This is going to be fun."  It was less than 5 seconds later that we heard a fire truck ramp up their siren.  No kidding.  The comedic timing was perfect and we had a good laugh.

With no fire trucks showing up in our driveway, we let the flames rage on!



We had a pretty good time watching it burn but we had to step back pretty far because of the heat. In the video you can even see the trees around the fire smoking. But it's not like we care. Our yard is riddled with walnut trees, so we say, good reddens! 

  After going inside to grab something, I came back out and found Michael like this, enjoying his creation.

  A Man and his fire.  Its a very special thing.  

This week we are getting our new layout all framed up! This reno is going to start taking shape into the home we want it to be! Exciting! Oh and if you were curious which windows we chose, it was Anderson.  They had great ratings on Consumer Reports and it seemed that, based on a lot of online reviews we read, people were a lot happier with Anderson Windows vs. Pella.  I guess time will tell! 

Have a great week everybody!

And don't forget what our 'ol friend Smokey says...