Dumpster Day

This weekend we held our first serious work party. We’ve been tearing out garbage and rotted parts of the house for months, and in the name of expedience, we’ve been simply tossing the debris into a giant pile near the house. But we’re now done (I hope) with demolition, so it seemed like a good time to order a dumpster and dispose of this stuff for good. The task seemed monumental, though, so Emily suggested that we give our friends the change to make good on their offers of aid- and they came!

I figured a 20-yard dumpster would be plenty big, and I was totally wrong. We got about 80% of the trash in there, and that was even with several things going our way, like Emily and Allyson stacking the lumber and sheet goods neatly, as well as jumping up and down on the bags of fiberglass to pack them in. Anthony and Victoria salvaged much of the clear lumber (unpainted, un treated, un rotted) to use in their sauna in the coming winter, and we sorted metals and plastic out to go to the recycle place.  When all was done, I could see the hillside below the house again for the first time since January. Yay! But the best part was getting rid of the stink. There’s always been a slightly nauseating whiff of rotting wood, mildew, and rat urine permeating the place, and it’s gone now. I think that the bags and bags of fiberglass insulation had a lot to do with that… they were basically one giant rats nest, and were a real mess to get rid of. It was a nasty enough job that Emily and I have been tearing it out for the last few weeks on our own, feeling guilty about asking volunteers to do such awful work (and wearing respirators while doing it).

I don’t plan on ordering another dumpster (this one was about $500 including fees and haulage), I’ll probably get the rest bit-by-bit with a pickup.

After the work was done, we settled down for a well-earned dinner. It’s great to be surrounded by friends you love, eating a bunch of home-cooked food in front of a crackling fire. Josh played for us on his guitar as we ate, drank, and told stories. The night fell around us, and the wildlife of the place started to emerge- we even saw a massive, eerie owl as it dodged silently between the hoary trees, looking for its own dinner. The final treat was something rarely seen in these parts: a thunderstorm. It wasn’t one of those windy, torrential deals like you see in the midwest, just some rumblings above followed by the first rain in weeks. Luckily, we had the canopy from the farmers’ market on hand, and could watch it all from under cover without having to go indoors.