Mowing the lawn and pulling nails...

We have a new lawn mowing service.  It is not particularly cheap, we have to provide room and board, clothing, education, etc.  

As I write this, I realize it's not that good of a deal for us, but gosh, he is cute!  

Wythe mowing our lawn

child labor at its best

I mentioned in a previous post that we were pulling up the new hardwood floors to find the original floors.  They were actually in better condition than we expected.  We have several sections that need to be patched, some loose boards to fix but nothing that we can't fix.  The biggest issue right now is pulling out the billions of tiny finishing nails they used and scrape off the areas where they glued plywood to the floor. 

scraping off the glue and plywood 

These are the nails we are pulling out. Some are so tiny you can hardly see them, you have to run your foot or hand over the floor to find them.  The only way to get them out is to grip them with nippers and slowly roll the nippers to ease the nail out of the wood.  

These are the nails I pulled out of an area less than two square feet.  As you can imagine, it is time consuming.   It is also frustrating.  Why anyone would cover up such a beautiful old floor?   

My kids really have been troopers during this project.  Many times we spend the entire day in a construction zone and they are left to fend for themselves.  For the most part they do an excellent job of finding a way to entertain themselves. 

a pry bar makes a good bridge

'til next time...