Thankfully, the title to this post is only a metaphor. Her “skin” in this instance is all of the construction debris that she has been surrounded by for so long, especially in the carport/entry. It looks bad, it was taking up much needed working space for the contractors, and all of that insulation was perfect for critters to create homes and hang out in.

Mice look for places to build homes, snakes look for mice. I did see a snake out there while cleaning. Most likely a rat snake, and in true Mandi fashion, I just said, “You don’t want none, bruh.” I don’t know if it was the words, the look on my face, my entire demeanor, or happy chance, but it went the other direction. Most likely it just couldn’t be bothered with someone who still says things to snakes like, “You don’t want none, bruh.” I am not terribly afraid of snakes, within reason.

Back to what I was talking about before the snake whispering thing. The clean up! This task did not look like it would be nearly as intense as it ended up being, at first. I knew just how much stuff was there, but had grown so used to seeing it, that it was more like furniture. Do you know what I mean? Hopefully you do not.

All of the old fiberglass “cotton candy” insulation has been taken out. So much old lumber was in the carport, and all of the ducts from the failed HVAC system (which also contained fiberglass “cotton candy”) had taken up residence under the carport. There were also scraps of the spray foam insulation that had been scraped off of the studs, and other areas that needed more attention than we anticipated at first. That stuff blows like nobody’s business, and it gets everywhere. It is like the glitter of insulation, in my opinion.

You can imagine this made it difficult for Chris and Gary to get much accomplished, and they had no work space at all. Not good. It’s amazing they got so much done in such a short amount of time having to go all around this mess.

So, on Thursday, I moved the very large HVAC unit that had been removed from the upstairs part of the house over to the office. It didn’t work for Rattlesnake, but could come in handy on another project.

I keep forgetting that my days of throwing bales of hay, lifting bags of horse feed, and horse training were actually over 10 years ago at their peak, and not just last week. However, I still think of myself as that same young ‘un, and was not deterred. I moved the unit with my trusty steed, Claudia, and pure muscle. I forgot the human body had so many of those muscle things. I am painfully aware of how many today though.

That was step one. For all of the other steps, I enlisted the help of my 16 year old, Matt on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I called Ryan in for extra support on Sunday.

Matt and my oldest Seth are great kids. They don’t usually just ask for money, they ask for a job to earn money. So when Matt asked if there was a job he could do on Friday, I said, “Why yes! Yes there is, son!” Seth actually took on the role of staying home and holding the fort down with his two younger brothers while we went to work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That was a gigantic help! Okay, back to Friday!

The first thing that Matt did Friday morning was pick up all of the limbs that had fallen in the yard at the office and two other Travis houses so that it could be mowed. He was raring to go and get his paycheck!

He came inside the office and was impatiently waiting to start on Rattlesnake. When I got finished with the things I was doing, we made our way out there. All of the insulation had to be separated and bagged. That’s not something you want to set on fire, or have just laying around in your pasture, and like I said, spray foam insulation = glitter.

All of the ducts that had the fiberglass type inside had to be chopped down to size. We had to separate the insulation and things that needed to be bagged in one pile and then set things like the old, ruined lumber, ruined ceiling tiles, scraps and damaged pieces of drywall, etc that could be burned into another pile.

The new lumber that Lee delivered for Chris is now off the ground and secure. Any still-usable pieces of lumber needed to be separated for Chris and Gary to have first grab at for the house, next grab is Lee in case it is needed for a project, and finally if there are no takers, I will make things out of it. I do enjoy that kind of thing.

Here we are, our piles we had to make were:

• To bag
• To burn
• To save
• To put away (for new materials)
• To go through and remove nails (this was piles of dirt that had accumulated under there) and be swept back into the yard

Now that we had a plan, the real fun started! Stay tuned for the amazing transformation of the Rattlesnake House carport!

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