The Great Remodel part 1

  Twenty two years ago my husband and I bought an old farm house that was built in the mid eighteen-nineties. It was a scary looking old house and needed a lot of work.
   We moved in the bitter cold of January. With a couch and a few mattresses to toss on the floor for the kids we called it home. I quickly learned to build fires in the wood stove to keep the frost from forming on the inside of the windows. I remember the day I discovered Presto Logs, no more chopping and loading dirty wood into the house, no more bringing in bugs or thawing out frozen yellow jackets that were hiding in the wood for the winter. I would simply take my Buick to the local feed store and load my trunk up with logs until my front tires barely touch the pavement.
    The house also came with a few undesirables. I first discovered the rat when we met face to face in my kitchen. He screeched and ran into the pantry while I screamed and ran into the living room. I hopped onto my couch and did a little shiver dance. I calmed myself down, took up my trusty fire poker and set off to look for the rat hole. I found it in the pantry floor and I nailed a canning lid over it, problem solved.
    Keeping the mice out was a little more tricky. I sat on the couch and watched them play by the warmth of the fire while I was completely frozen in fear. I spent the whole next day filling every crack and crevice I could find with my can of liquid spray insulation. 
It worked pretty good until I used it on the door jams, the insulation swelled so much it pushed the jam out and we couldn't get the door closed, boy was I in trouble, it took my husband hours to dig it all out. (problem solved, sorry honey).
 The first major part of our remodel was to add to the second story. The plan was that my husband framed the wall and my oldest daughter and I were to hold it in place while he nailed it off. I have never been so scared in my life. Holding on to a thousand pound wall on the second floor with a thirteen year old girl did not go over well with either of us. I have never dug my nails in so deep or stretched my body to such lengths as I did that day.
  After nailing the upstairs floor perfectly in place so it wouldn't squeak we discovered that a cat had gotten between the floor boards the night before and gave birth to kittens. She was nicely sealed into our squeak-free floor and it took hours of floor removal to get little the family safely out.