Day 3. We have wronged Tasha

Today was long and productive, with three of us on the job. Boom! The pantry and broom closet gone. Pow! The cabinets (in fact, the whole wall) backing onto the basement stairs - disappeared. Ratazz! The sink cabinet carved down to a sink cabinet (with nothing on either side).  Krazit! The structural supports for the dropped ceiling - out of the house.

(Thursday - HomoDommi on the phone vs. tonight, with cat-blur.) We now have a large, echoing, high-ceilinged room, with nothing but appliances (all working, thankfully) -- sink, fridge, stove and dishwasher. (I'm not counting the shop-vac, the saw-horse-and-plank table of tools, or the portable stool holding the phone).  All the electrical hot ends are tidied up and put aside for the contractor electrician to take care of (we are down from three lights to one. Sadly, the one isn't much dimmer than the three had been).  There are also two gaping holes in the floor, one where the chimney used to be, and another unearthed under a cabinet next to the bathroom.

From the number of mouse droppings -- and indeed, a desiccated skeleton of a mouse under the rotted floor of the sink cabinet -- we have concluded that these are not the work of merely one mouse. Some of it, we can tell, is more recent than work we did last summer. So, clearly, Tasha has not been bringing mice into the house, but catching current residents. She is due apologies, and has been awarded extra canned food.

No big surprises today, at least of the pleasant sort.  We found a section of old linoleum, which HomoDommi had seen before in another corner.  The sink cabinet was completely rotted on the floor, but (we were pleased to learn) the floor underneath that is as strong as ever.

HomoDommi is in town only one more day, this trip. Ideally, in that day, he'd complete about 4 days' worth of work -- so clearly, he will be coming back in a week or two.  We will try to help him finish anything that needs to be done before the contractors (plumber and electrician) come in.