The old house is no more...

Colin Cheever and Craig Pope started tearing down the existing house on Tuesday morning. They started pulling it apart around 10 AM and the last corner of the house went down a few hours later (this picture is the house before the first whack). I didn't see the chimney go down, but according to several reports it took some extra oomph before it would fall over. Some bats flew out of the house as it was coming down. We didn't see anything else come out, although there were probably mice etc. Sadly no pots of gold or bags of money fell out of the walls.

Craig and Colin have been crunching up the bits and moving it all off-site. Here's a picture of it mid-process. They suggested burning it in the foundation instead of hauling, and I told them we prefer not to have it all burned. I don't know how they're disposing of it, but they know how we feel so I guess we've done the best we can. Anyway, when it's all over we're going to start landscaping the area. There will be a big flat area that will be nicely graded (and seeded, or so they think.) There's no way we're going to mow all that, so I think we're going to go with something else. Probably some beds including a wildflower area, and some more trees to start closing off the front area. There's also a big bunch of extra dirt that we might use to make berms.

There's not much more to say. I'll edit the post when I get a picture of the house all gone

Big Backhoe!

Colin delivered the destructo backhoe to the land today. Teardown
will begin on Tuesday, August 26!