Crowbars and Snow Storms

No sleeping in for me and Pete this weekend!  We had to be at our house by 8AM on Saturday in case our Verizon Fios installer showed up on time.  {They gave us a window of 8AM to 5PM...quite a large window if you ask me.}  We didn't mind getting to the house super early because tearing down the plaster ceiling in the garage was not going to be easy peasy, and we wanted to put in as many hours as we could before the early season snow storm started to accumulate.  The weather forecasters were calling for 6 - 10 inches, but we thought there was no way we'd really get that.  HA!  We were wrong.

By the time we arrived at the house, the wet snow/rain was just starting to fall.  Pete and I got started moving some stuff out of the area we were going to begin on...then we got to ripping down the ceiling.  We were tentative at first, but once we got going, we were just pulling away with the crowbars. 

The hubby hard at work.

And again.

Me having some fun pulling down the ceiling.

And again.

Part of my debris pile.

It wasn't too hard to get the ceiling to come down.  The worst part was going back and removing the hundreds of nails that were still in the joists. 

Bunch of nails that needed to be removed from the joists.

And again.

They needed to come out so that our contractor could easily put up the new insulation and drywall, without having to worry about doing any of the time consuming, nit-picky {that's a technical term} stuff.

Pete and I were so very happy we ended up removing the ceiling, because thanks to that huge leak that occurred in the old master shower, there was quite a bit of black mold growing on the backside of the plaster and the {pathetically thin} insulation.

Mold growing on the back of a piece of the ceiling.

Mold growing on the old insulation.

Our Verizon installer showed up a little late, but it was better than our electrician that just did not show!!

After about 4 hours of work, the Verizon guy had our phone, TV and Internet all hooked and ready to go. 
It was about that same time that I told Pete we really needed to head home.  We were a little more than halfway through the garage ceiling and the snow was really coming down.  All we could hear outside was the cracking of tree limbs and sirens in the distance.  The roads were untouched and we just heard cars spinning their wheels trying to make it up the road.

View from our front yard as the snow was falling.

First snowfall at the house.

First snowfall for the super cute couple that lives across the street from us.  They just got married and bought their house this past Spring/Summer too!

Another view from our front yard.  So pretty, but too bad it causes so many problems for people.  Oh yea, and it's cold when this happens...booooooooooo.

The hubs finally agreed that we should get on the road...especially since we needed to drive 45 miles west to get to his parents house.  This is a little of what we encountered on our way home. 

Driving down the road in Whippany.

Good ole' Rt. 80 West.

More of Rt. 80 West...it's WAY too early for all this nonsense!

One of the downed trees we encountered.

Driving through Blairstown to try and get home safe.

Our usual 50 minute drive took us 3 hours!!  It was one of the scariest and most frustrating drives {trees down everywhere...trapping us on roads, gas tank on empty because we burned through over a quarter of a tank when the car would lose traction the entire ride} we ever made...but we got home safe.  Now if we could only get power back.

I hope everyone else had a safe and less eventful weekend!  Fingers crossed that our electrician actually shows up today!  {Gosh, I feel like I end a lot of posts saying that we are crossing our fingers for our workers show up....hmmmm.}