ye olde shanty: home sweet home part 2, aka bless this mess.

first of all, thanks a million to everyone who's given sugarbear and i such encouraging feedback on the new house(s) project! it was nervewracking to start the #yeoldeshanty posts, but holy hell, y'all-i didn't expect to get a response, which has been overwhelming in such a great way.  your comments and enthusiasm mean the world to me, FO RILL, because this has been a craptastic rollercoaster week. getting out of our townhouse (sad as balls, by the way), trying to move into, live and run a business out of a rented garage apartment (Clusterfuck Central, LLC), trying to keep up with design projects, trying to demo and paint and renovate at least one of the houses to a point where we can move into it this coming week (OH GOOD, MORE MOVING, PLEASE SHOOT ME) has depleted me. i have needed a friend HARD like every five minutes, and in lieu of full-time hand-holding from actual friends, your comments have been that. not to be all shmoopy, but really. thank you, miracle interweb support system. also, big shout-out to my main squeeze, xanax - YOU COMPLETE ME.

the real point here, is that we became new homeowners last week, and on saturday, we started ripping those houses apart.

at 7:30 am saturday, the demo crew showed up and those guys were ready to party. NO SERIOUSLY, they had a blast. have you ever seen a demo crew? some of the happiest workers ever. apparently, ripping a house apart fulfills some weird male desire, because b-radical loves it too. i've never seen so many crazy-eye, weird little maniacal laugh and sledgehammering combos. someone on the demo crew had brought their little kid (he stayed out of the way during the dangerous parts) and at one point he had a hammer and was just beating the shit out of a pile of dirt. there's probs a metaphor there, but mainly it was hilarious.

worth noting is that through my real J-O-B, i've started using 1-800-GOTJUNK to haul off trash. THEY ARE AMAZING. it's expensive, certainly much more expensive than just getting a dumpster dropped off, but seriously, who is having a dumpster dropped off? are we sitting around drinking coffee talking about the best place to get a dumpster? you can call the 1-800-GOTJUNK team in the morning, and they will have a crew stop by THAT DAY to clean up and haul away your trash. they send a crew with an empty truck and charge by the half or full load, and the crews work fast and hard to carry and load your junk. in our case, i called mid-day and asked them to send as many trucks as possible. we ended up needing about 4 trucks, but part of that was because our new neighbor, beverly, asked if she could put "a few things" in one truck, and ended up filling HALF a truck.

i shit you not. on the upside, we have a neighbor named beverly and she owes us about $300 worth of favors.

before.

seriously, that kid is what? five? sugarbear is in the blue shirt and was having a pretty great time.

so, the front yard, sans crazy fence structure, is enormous. ps-look at all that trash.

the two black pipes under the ladder are the water lines. brad and i took guesses on how long it would take for the demo crew to break one or both of them, and if you guessed around noon, you'd be the winner.

hot pink door across the street is pretty sassy.

the kid.

sugarbear in repose.

so under all that stupid deck we found A STOOP!!

current state of the front, after most of the debris had been hauled off.

brad again.

steve on the back house deck, which had to go before someone fell off the side.

RIP, unsafe deck. please note our grove of papaya trees and mercer's collection of tidy cat litter buckets.

papayas for daaaaayyyysss. too bad no one likes papayas.

see that enormous mountain of trash between the flamingo and green bush? THAT WAS LEFT INSIDE THE BACK HOUSE. and that's not even everything.

with all the testosterone and scary danger vibes, i stuck to tasks like getting the back house cleaned out and corralling the tens of thousands of terra cottery strewn everywhere. the previous owners left either a normal amount of shit? or maybe like a million more times than normal? i have no idea, but i suspect the latter. at least some of it has been entertaining? here is a smattering:

creepy doll in a polio robe, coming soon to YOUR NEXT NIGHTMARE.

accept a miracle! cards, blank on the back. i've been finding these everywhere, which is great because I ACCEPT. we need all the miracles we can get.

high times, september 1978.

the lady in red, chris de burgh. can't wait to get the record player unpacked and spin the shit out of this track.

playboy, april 1987. the jacket/scarf combo is killing me, but mainly, WHICH JEANS ARE TOO SEXY FOR ADS???

the next person who invites me to a baby shower is totally getting that doll.

no one seemed to know what the feathers in the doorways meant, but here are a few more photos. i need to get pictures of all the pots and crystals and skulls and hats left behind.

i hope you still think this is interesting, because there is soooooo much more. like yesterday, i found an ENTIRE BOX of old creepy dolls and we started painting the back house floors black (like my heart). plus we are meeting the architects next week, and i'm pretty jazzed about that.

up next in the YE OLDE SHANTY adventures: TERMITE TENTS.

ttfn.