And so it begins...

It appears we are finally ready to dismantle our monolithic shrine to destruction. While I will try to mostly resist the urge to wax poetic about rebirth, coming of spring, phoenixes rising out of ashes, etc., I will say that tearing down the house feels a lot like moving out of the worst of the grief we have all been experiencing. We really did love the house we had, for all its faults and in spite of the things it didn't have (insulation, level floors, and overhead lighting to name a few). And while it didn't all show, we (and by we, I mostly mean Jeff), poured quite a bit of sweat into that house, undoing weird things that were done before we moved in, making improvements, and trying, little by little, to do the fixer-upping you commit to when you buy a fixer-upper. That said, we have said our good-byes, have accepted that its just not a good idea to try to save the house that was, and we are more than ready to move on.

Construction actually started this past week. Everything we want to save is out of the house, including the oval window next to the front door, which will be reinstalled in the new house, and the porch swing, which will likely hang beneath the tree house sometime this summer. Asbestos has been abated - apparently there was less than was initially thought, which is good. Monday morning, the builders will start tearing the barn down by hand, to minimize any risk of damage to our neighbors' home behind the house. The main house will come down by machine, and the floor "system" of both buildings will be torn out by hand to minimize damage to our salvageable foundation. In builderspeak, the floor "system" means "the floor." We also have porch systems, deck systems, wall systems, stair systems, you name it.

If the houses around Kimball school, which I have watched come down this week out of my office window, are any indication, the teardown won't take long at all. Then comes a couple of months of framing. I'll try to post pictures of the progress, but I think we all know that I can be a teeny tiny bit challenged when it comes to doing things like that.

Wish us luck.