Them bones

Dust rise right on over my time 

Empty fossil of the new scene 

I feel so alone 

Gonna end up a big ol' pile of them bones 

(Them Bones, Alice In Chains)

The Masters arrived early on Saturday morning ready to push the house and its young owners to the limits.

(More poorly-shot footage emerged of the old house, at least it was at the right angle this time. A close study suggests this was taken before more work began Saturday morning.)

The old house remained in its induced coma, and a good thing for it. By the end of Saturday it was all ribs, not a lather existed in the mid-part. Lathers continue to line the exterior walls, some will be removed when the insulation is put it but they will remain for the most part.

The two end rooms, the living room and kitchen/dining, were not lined with lathers. Also, the studs and floors are a different material to the front three rooms. It is likely that the original house was just the front three, with the back 2 added later.

Times were very different in the late-19th century.

A floorboard specialist inspected the boards Saturday morning to see whether they were in good condition to be recycled and live on. The floor is a little close to the ground and there was evidence of borers, so the boards did not meet the specialists approval.

The boards would be lifted non-carefully, care-free even, and discarded.


Sunday required another visit to the tip to offload a truck and a trailers worth of trash. I remain fascinated with the truck and took the video of it offloading the plaster:

The floor in all the rooms was fully lifted by lunch - they did not a chance as I wielded my Mighty Pick-Axe (+1 damage to floorboard).

The afternoon passed, and so too the passageway boards and all the nails.

Sunday night the house was a skeleton, an empty fossil, a pile o' bones.

The house is reduced to its fundamentals, if much more were removed it would be difficult to call it a house. Maybe we cannot call it that now, if a house is four walls, a floor and a ceiling. The Old House lacks a floor.

But there is still one more activity to go before life can be restored, the replacement of its stumps. Starting next Monday the old wooden stumps will be replaced with modern concrete ones.