Tearing Down the House

The first step in starting the new house was tearing down the old one. It gave us a lot of anguish, but it had to be done.

We had struck an agreement with our contractor Joe, to reuse the original antique beams that were in the house.  This meant they couldn't come in and bulldoze the house down - they needed to take it apart carefully.  And somehow, that seemed to give it more respect.

Down to the studs

We wanted to reuse anything that we could.  But unfortunately, all the original mouldings, doors, and trim work had been replaced with 1970's style materials (blah ranch molding), so there was nothing of antique value.  We donated the kitchen and bathroom cabinets to Habitat for Humanity's ReStore.  One of our contractors took all the doors.  And the windows were in pretty bad shape, so they just went in the dumpster.

So weird to see the sunlight streaming down the old staircase

It was still hard to see it come down.  Lots of neighbors came to take pictures.  And we just felt guilty, because we couldn't save the house.

It was a sad, sad day.








We had hoped to discover something exciting during the demo.  But other than an old can of tobacco and a couple of broken bottles, there wasn't much to be found.  But we did get a surprise.  We had thought the foundation under the kitchen addition was a good one - but one of our contractors leaned against it and it came tumbling down!!  So now we have more foundation work than we expected!

And once it was gone, all we had left was a big hole in the ground.  It was time to start rebuilding.  New construction is quick, so there was something to look forward to!

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