#100DAYPROJECT Day 16 #DEMODAY #HTGV #excavators #renovation #demolition #goodnightconstructionsight
Demo day finally arrived. It had been the long haul to get to this day. We closed on our home in September 2017 and moved out in June 2018. Because of a paperwork hangup related to moving the electrical from the house to a temporary pole with the city, it took an extra excruciating 3 to 4 weeks to begin demo of the house. If building this house were a movie, this would queue some ominous music with serious foreshadowing. We were needlessly burning through the best weather of the year for building waiting for a simple city procedure. Naturally, the process advanced over the 4th of July weekend when we were taking a rare holiday during this process.
The morning the demo really got going, we took the boys over to the house to watch. The boys love construction vehicles. Since they have been born, I have a dramatically increased capacity to identify an excavator from a front loader, a bulldozer and a motor grader. I have read and re-read "Good Night Construction Sight" on repeat, and many more of thecopy-cat books. We figured they would love to watch the excavator in action for the demo.
Brett stood across the street from the action with the boys in the buggy. This was our first house - single-family house. Andy*, our oldest, had been paraded through an unbelievable number of open houses. Or realtor had been a regular snuggler of our baby, Eli* as we toured countless houses. Andy was really excited about "our new house", a phrase he repeated regularly. Suddenly the man operating the excavator started his work.
Andy shouted, "oh no! my room!" as the excavator tore through the front bedroom. Brett took the boys home shortly after that. Eli wasn't old enough to understand, but Andy loved our little house. He still talks about missing it on occasion.. In it's imperfection it was quite wonderful. Not in the sense that it didn't need a ton of work. (In addition to the need for new roofing being visible from satellite imagery, the electrical insulation was crumbling). The new house and their new room is bigger and better, no doubt. We got them an Ikea light that looks like the Death Star and have started to make it our own.. But there was a certain level of simplicity. Beautiful simplicity in the plaster walls, the "like new hardwoods" with the nails popping out, and the curious ~60 square foot addion that had been added to the kitchen in the 1990s. Simplicity in taping up all the boys artwork on the kitchen walls with the plaid blue and white wall paper. There is simplicity in having a dream and a goal before it is realized.
The house came down and just the foundation was left. As cement ages it become stronger with time. The foundation is resilient and strong and we built our new house in its place. Much of the original laurel hedge and a bush we affectionately refer to as "cousin-it" still stand. We needed more than a two bedroom house and began this journey.
We needed more than a two bedroom house, More than we knew, it turns out The excavator had barely pulled away from our demolished house when I found out that I was pregnant with our 3rd baby.
[*Note these are not their actual names, but are close enough for our purposes on the internet land.)
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