There’s still a little snow on the ground here in Sindersdorf this morning (Monday, 4 January).

This is the view from the upstairs window (below), towards the main street and the Volunteer Fire Department (Freiwillige Feuerwehr) house.

The next door neighbor was out shoveling his Hof (driveway).  Hi Xaver 🙂

On Monday morning, we got put to work here at the house.  Guess we have to earn our keep, right? 🙂  Stilla’s brother Wolfgang has been cleaning out and working on the attic.  There used to be a room at one end of the attic that was built out in 1974 with cinder block walls and heavy-duty paneling and plaster.  William and Wolfgang had already broken down most of the walls prior to us getting here and now there was a huge pile of debris that needed to be cleaned out.

Here we are taking an old metal door down the narrow stairwell from the attic.  I supervised most of the heavy-lifting as you can see from the pics  🙂

Wolfgang, William, and Stilla carefully maneuvered the door down two flights of stairs to the front yard.  Wolfgang will probably re-purpose the door somewhere else around the house.

That was one heavy door, or so I was told 🙂  How do you like the ’70s-era poster still pasted on the door?

The remnants of the cinderblock walls were strewn all over the floor in the attic.  Now how should we get all this cleaned up?

Well, the solution was a giant transport container and a construction debris chute that Wolfgang had delivered from a local business:

Here we are stringing the chute in place up to the attic window:

The plastic debris chute got heavier and heavier the higher up we pulled.  Here I am tying off the debris chute to one of the attic timbers.  Hope it holds 🙂

We finally got the top piece of the debris chute in place.

And now it was just a matter of tossing all the debris down the chute…

… we used our hands and shovels to toss chunks of concrete and plaster down the chute and into the container.

Even Stilla got crazy with the sledgehammer 😉

Go Stilla, Go!  Whew… we haven’t worked that hard in awhile 🙂

We got most of the debris cleaned out by late-afternoon when we finally called it a day.  We’ll finish up tomorrow morning.  We had to get ready to go to another birthday party!

But before we left the attic for the day, Stilla snapped some pics from the seldom used attic windows.  Here’s some views (below) from the attic window on the west-side of the house:

And here’s the view out the other side of the attic on the east-side of the house (below).

After we got cleaned up, Stilla and I got picked up by Maria (Stilla’s older sister) who drove us over to Wolfgang and Verena’s house in Hilpoltstein.  Wolfgang is Maria’s son, who recently got married to Verena.

It was Verena’s birthday!  Happy Birthday Verena 🙂

Wolfgang & Verena visited us in Colorado back in 2012.  We took them with us on a short trip in the Urban Escape Vehicle through Utah.

Here’s Wolfgang & Verena (below) at Goosenecks State Park in June 2012.

Our campsite view at Goosenecks State Park in 2012.

We enjoyed the evening with close family and lots of Wolfgang & Verena’s friends who showed up to help celebrate her birthday.

As usual… lots of good food and liquid refreshments :

Wolfgang demonstrated his espresso making skills with his commercial grade machine.  It didn’t know making coffee could be so complicated 🙂

We held out late into the evening and were the last ones to leave.  We thanked Wolfgang & Verena for another wonderful evening and caught a ride back home with Martin and Maria.

Happy Birthday Verena!