Good-Bye, House, Part 3

...Continued from yesterday:
     Friday morning started with a pow-wow over breakfast during which Tom, Tommy, Andy and I loosely divvied up the day's tasks, though we all ended up sort of floating as needed.

Andy volunteered to detail and polish the floors,

…while I took the job of polishing the cabinets and woodwork. 

     Tom and Tommy started on the carpeting in the two upstairs bedrooms, 

...each carpet of which had its own release style, so to speak.
     Again, it was all about the padding.

     The padding beneath the flowered carpet came up easily in one piece, leaving behind  just a layer of the dirt of ages,

...whereas the padding in the loft bedroom needed to be scraped up, carefully, and fell to dust on contact.

Tom's scraping tool of choice was a plastic snow shovel.

         Then came  the challenge of the upstairs hallway and the stairs,

…upon which our imagined contractor’s kid (see yesterday’s post)  must have not only gone into hyper-drive with his dad’s staple gun - we counted around 20 staples in each step – but must have also laid hands on the hammer and nails,  as each step also had a row of nails hammered in across the  top.

 
  See the galaxy of staple scars on this step and the row of nail holes across the top?  

     Still, the wooden stairs looked quite nice by the end of the day after being cleaned, polished, and set gloriously free of 60 years of carpeting,

...as did all the floors.

    The next morning Tom's and Andy's brother Donald and wife Mary arrived from Columbus and their sister Mary Jane and husband Ken came in from Amherst, Ohio.

Clockwise:  Tommy, Andy, Ken, Tom, Donald, and Mary.

    Everyone spent the day taking care of odds and ends, cleaning out closets and drawers,

...hauling stuff out to the garage,

.., the siblings discussing a few more of the  never-ending decisions to be made.

   As for me, I spent the day mostly meandering around, straightening up the rooms, making the beds,

...looking at things.

Another of the afghans I made for Tom's parents back in my crochet-addiction phase.

     Good-bye, old house.

     We've had some times.

               Mary Jane                     Donald                             Andy                              Tom