Excuse Me, Have You Seen Our House?

After several false starts due to circumstances out of our control, we have finally started dismantling our house. I say dismantling because we are trying to salvage what we can to sell, give away or re-use in the rebuild.

Pealing back the walls has been like looking for buried treasure. With the removal of each layer another layer is revealed. Every time the house was remodeled, another layer was added. Drywall on top of paneling, on top of drywall, on top of paneling, on top of drywall. Carpet on top of carpet, tile on top of tile. This makes demo a bit rough. But the good news is—we now have about six more inches of ceiling height.

When you become part of the process, it becomes less shocking to walk into your house after the walls are gone or seeing a gaping hole in you basement where there used to be a foundation or a pile of dirt were the sunroom used to stand.

Doing some of the work yourself is exhausting and rewarding. But, mostly exhausting. I kid.

After the original plan to tear down the existing structure and rebuild a new house was derailed by a final estimate that was $400,000 above our original budget, coupled with us jumping through more bureaucratic hoops than we had the energy for—we regrouped one last time. We kept telling ourselves that not being able to tear down the structure must be a sign. A sign that someone doesn’t want this place torn down. Someone wants us to preserve the memories that have been created here and keep adding layers of memories to those already created.

So, after 4 years of trying to get this started. We can finally say, there is no turning back now. Let the memory creation begin.