Huge chimney

Hi everyone,

Time flies when you are doing 55-60 jobsite hours per week. I am discovering I am not quite as durable as I was at 25. Lots of aches and pains from too much labor.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we removed an oversize chimney to make space in the new floor plan. It turned out to be solid brick, and the mortar was excellent. I spent probably 10 hours swinging a sledgehammer. Nicholas and Joshua cleaned up all of the bricks themselves. Samuel got in on the action a bit.

Things are progressing well with the house. I am now remodeling window sizes and setting bathtubs. Hopefully the windows will be in this week. We are replacing one portion of the roof and will be replacing drip edge and subfascia board to solidify the roof system. Katrina ripped off almost all of the roof edge components. This was at least partially to bad workmanship.

We picked up a kiddie pool for the little kids. It has been fairly warm, but has not exceeded the high 80's. Yesterday we got 2 thunderstorms which left several inches of rain.

On Sunday, we wasted an hour and rode the ferry across the bay between Bay St. Louis and Waveland on MS SR 90. It was provided by Mississippi DOT until the bridge was rebuilt. They opened the first side today! Yeah! We can now travel to the east without traveling 8 miles north to the interstate. It was fun. We also did some sightseeing in Waveland and Bay St. Louis.

Where we are on the bay they receive high and low tide. It's amazing how much difference it makes. These pictures show how much of difference it actually is.

Our van is repaired, but we are waiting for the garage and our insurance to complete their paperwork. It has been a good experience with the insurance.

After hearing nothing but disgust with bad insurance stories, it was refreshing. We regularly see 4X8 sheets of plywood painted with words such as State Farm sucks or State Farm is the Axis of Evil.

This is Ethan's favorite past time. Riding his bike all day.

Hope you are all enjoying our site. Keep in touch.