Thanksgiving 2021-The Trailer

This is the third year in a row that we went to Texas for Thanksgiving. This year we had a bit of a "work week." Andy's parents decided to buy a small portion of land from Andy's uncle and build a little house on it. Uncle John said he'd give them a good deal ($1 for 5 acres) if we all helped him take down an old trailer that had been left on the land by the previous owners. This is what the trailer looked like before we started. Andy's parents got to town a few days before we did, so the group started without us. Apparently the former people just up and left everything in the trailer. There were fully made beds, pots and pans, shoes...so much stuff, and of course it was all pretty gross. Uncle John had a dumpster delivered to the site, so they burned what they could, and threw away the rest.

By the time we got there, they had made a lot of progress. Our job on the first day was to finish taking the boards out of the front porch. Andy would use the crowbar to get each board off.

Then the girls would pry the nails out of the boards and put the boards in the fire. When the fire would get too big, we'd start a new pile of burnable materials.

Apparently in Texas we let our son use a flame thrower to start a huge bonfire. Who knew?

After a couple of days, we had the trailer down to its bare bones. Then John attached a chain to one of the main supporting posts, and used the tractor to pull it down. The whole thing just flattened.

Then it was time to start taking apart the roof. We had to pull up all of the shingles and put them in the dumpster because they weren't flammable.

By our last day there, we finally had everything demolished down the the lowest level. I'm not sure what John will do with the platform. As he said all along, he's demolished as many trailers as we have, so he really played the whole process by ear.

Remember when we were prying all of the nails out of those boards on our first day? Turns out that was like draining the ocean by the bowlful. After the fire was out and completely cooled, the girls went through the ashes with two magnetic poles picking up all of the leftover metal. It was such a satisfying job that they ended up doing it for over two hours. They threw away over twenty bowls of nails, staples, and other metal into the dumpster. 

It was quite fun having a big project to do over the course of the week, and we were very thankful that no one got too hurt!