Okay I tackled it but......

it's not finished yet. While I removed 5 bags of trash( mostly old bills and old tax stuff) and put several bags of good usable items in the car to donate, we still have a lot of STUFF! LOL!!!!  You can see some of Jon's old G.I.. Joe stuff on the bed. I boxed up all of the G.I.Joe items, his A.W.A.N.A. Derby cars and awards as well as his Mountainman Rendevous outfit and accessories.

 Okay I couldn't bring myself to take photos until I'd picked up some of the old bills and old taxes I had setting in piles all over the floor and bed.  You can see the two garbage bags full and Mike had already hauled out two others to burn in our burn barrel.

 Cortney kind of had this corner cleaned out, as this is where she does her beading. You can see the Fisher Price Doll House. Well this is Cortney's and she's decided that she wants to keep it and all the accessories she has, because someday she might have a daughter and she'd like to hand it down.

 I told you I had old taxes! Well, I'm NOT a pack rat, it was simply a case of out of sight out of mind, that is until I began running out of file cabinet space*wink*  I have no idea why I hung onto these old bills, some of those dated back to 1997, Whew!  It was kind of fun looking back at some of the utility bills( much, much lower than today's *sigh*) and house payments :o)   I also say ways we certainly could have lived more frugal, in other words we spent a lot of money we didn't need to*sigh*, what is it they say hindsight is 20/20.

 Here is the linoleum that is in the closet, it is similar to what was in the whole house, which we promptly pulled up( thankfully it wasn't glued down, only tacked down around the edges.) to reveal an unfinished maple flooring downstairs and pine flooring upstairs( which is painted*sigh*)

 Isn't it perty????? This piece is glued down or due to the heat from the window it is stuck, so we'll deal with it another day.

 Cortney's room is the smaller of the two bedrooms upstairs and they tried to add a closet but it was still to small to hang dresses in, so... we tore it out and when Jon moved out, Cortney used his old closet and as you can see some of her dresses are still hanging on the floor.

Ever see a window in a closet? Well, it does light it up nice in the daytime, but as you can see it also magnifies the heat( this damage was done before we moved here, so we added a curtain to  that stopped the problem, but it also blocks the light. Also this closet was painted a dark, dark brown and when we repainted Jon's room we painted it a light cream, which helped to make it look lighter inside, especially since there is no electric light in the closet.

While cleaning up the closet I came across Jon's stash of guns..... Now these are guns he made from materials he found here on the farm. Jon has a very creative mind and was very talented at making guns and weapons, so when he and his friends gathered they'd have wars. Jon also has lots of camouflaged items and they'd play down in the trees along the river.

Here is a sample of some of the guns and accessories he built.......
                             

 This is a pump action sawed off shotgun and the pump action works.

 Some sort of automatic weapon, made from old barn wood and scrap lumber.

 This is a double barrel shotgun, again with scrap lumber and an old wooden broom handle for the barrels.

 Some sort of rifle, scrap barn wood, and copper pipe for the barrel.

 Nice trigger huh?  Like I said he had a great imagination.

 This was a military radio, for communication, he carved the antenna from a branch.

 This was his masterpiece, all of the other boy were always trying to trade Jon for this gun. The scope is made of PVC and it has lenses, with cross hairs( see photo below) and the scope mounts are wooden. The barrel is metal. The stock, is glued together wafer board and then he camouflage painted it. This gun also has a silencer( pictured below, two pictures down)

See the cross hairs? Pretty neat   :o)                                 

 He was working on refining this and never repainted it. You can see it's made of wafer board( click photo to enlarge)  See the silencer?

Silencer added to the end of the barrel.  Jon and his friends used to have hours and hours of fun playing war and making hideouts.
Going through some of the STUFF was not so fun, while other stuff like Jon's guns and radio brought back some fun memories for me. *wink*


Now onto the cleaner, more organized, way....... less messy room!  There is still lots of STUFF, some of which we'll donate to a charity, but until the room is repainted and set up the way we want it( not sure how much room we'll have) we'll just keep shuffling it around while repainting the room. I also scrubbed the walls, baseboard and floor, boy howdy did it need it too, after two years of just sitting, LOL!!!

 The bed is now ready for company, I will warn you it is a firm mattress though, LOL!!! This was Cortney's old bed, before she decided she'd like a double bed. The frame was from a canopy bed( garage sale find) and it didn't have the canopy, so Mike added the post balls and I hand painted hearts on the headboard and end board( you can't see either in this photo.) I do think this will be repainted to match the room, so not look like a childs bed.

 See why we're repainting, I'm thinking no camouflage will be nice. :o)  Thankfully it's just the one wall and not the whole room.

This is the stuff we're going to be shuffling around until we get the room repainted and set up. It's still a HUGE improvement, don't you think?   Now when it gets repainted and all rearranged I'll post photos. I'm hoping to be able to get to painting this next week( it will have to be primed on the camouflaged wall first( most likely two coats) before painting. The baseboards and doors all need to be repainted as well, boys are hard on paint!  Someday( not in the near future) the plan is to sand the upstairs floors and refinish them. Maybe by then we'll decide to have them carpeted, since they are just pine board floors, we'll see....

Just outside the door( above are book shelves) filled to overflowing with curriculum from our home schooling days. This is the next project to be tackled and then I'll repaint the foyer and rearrange our books that we have all over downstairs to one location.
Now that I'm on a roll ........... I also have 20+ yrs of photos to organize and get into albums*sigh* 

Blessings for your weekend, our winter storm has arrived and we're warm and toasty inside enjoying hot tea( coffee in Mike's case) and reading some books and magazines.