Em's Little Story

The church building we bought here in Oak Creek, Colorado, at one time in its history, was heated with coal. Coal is an abundant source of fuel in this area. Years later that converted (so to speak) to cleaner propane heat. Anyway, we are trying to turn this room into a laundry room and here Em's Little Story begins.

You will not believe the project that literally "fell in" to the utility room I have been trying to clean and paint. On one side of the wall across from the propane heater there was a piece of wood about 4 feet by 8 feet. A few days ago I peeped behind it and saw that there was coal and an opening about 16"x16". It was a little spooky! (When I told our son Scott about it, he brought up the thought that maybe Jimmy Hoffa was buried in that chute!)

Anyway, there is so much residual coal dust that last night I took buckets of water and just threw it up in the air on the studs and the walls and the water and coal dust made this black mixture that continued to drip on me and I was black! I continued doing this until I had used all of the hot water out of the hot water tank. Then I swept and cleaned the floor.

Now, I thought, I can really begin to paint!

However , back to this morning, I decided that I would just shovel that coal out of those holes that were behind the board so that I could get the utility room totally clean. Well, each time I shoveled, more coal would fall in. I began to sing Ernie Ford's song "I loaded 16 tons, what you get....."(Yes, I wondered if some bones might be in the mix-thanks to Scott's suggestion!)

There is no way that I can get the coal out today. It is too big of a job. I loaded 10 bags of it and who knows how many more "truck loads" of that coal is still in that chute!! Plus, what do you do with unwanted coal?

Can't wait until Gary sees my project!

Got coal?

Love,
Emily