Clean-up

Yesterday, as repairs moved forward, and removal of the old siding was imminent, the time had come to get rid of the piles of detritus that had been growing in the back and front of the house for months.

A few weeks ago, immediately after the hurricane, I'd called a guy who rents out dumpsters.  The hope was that he'd leave it here for weeks on end, and we could slowly fill it.  Unfortunately, due to that very hurricane, all is dumpsters were in heavy circulation, so instead of throwing debris into a dumpster, we had a huge piles of stuff resting on the soggy ground.

George suggested that the most efficient (and ultimately economical) path would be to get someone who could just come in with a truck, load up all the stuff and take it to the dump.  Sounded easy enough, but going through the Yellow Pages and making many calls was mostly futile.

pile 1

This morning I re-called the original dumpster guy and wonder of wonders he offered to come over this afternoon to see what could be done.

pile 2

Loaded Truck

Keith Hamm, proprietor of Hammy's Clean-ups and Container Rental (if I had known that was the company name I would have called him immediately), showed up with his assistant and the three of us (how could I not join in this grand activity--so reminiscent of all my work last year?) worked for hours.   At first glance, the 15 yard dumpster looked enormous.  Once we started loading it, I was certain we didn't have nearly enough debris, even with our two piles and assorted junk in house and garage.   Oh--I certainly don't have an eye for assessing how much debris can fit in a 15 yard dumpster.  It's true I threw in some added junk from the garage and new room and even got rid of one of the broken toilets, but once we worked our way through those two piles, the dumpster was almost over-flowing.  The fully loaded dumpster pulled off carrying centuries of discarded siding off to the dump.

no pile 1

no pile 2

Woe is me--I can't train the pictures to go to their proper places in the narrative--but a careful observer should be able to figure it out.

In addition to all this clean-up, the repair work on beams is just about done but I will only muddle matters if I try to include that picture--so on to the next post!