Saturday, November 28, 2020

House to Home, Volume 7 - No Turning Back Now

Buckle up kids, here comes a very long photo essay.

Preamble:  the excavator showed up on Monday, October 19th and he went to TOWN.  I did momentarily chain myself to the beautiful azalea right next to my garage but Troy offered to dig it out and replant it for me so Greenpeace stood down.  Our plan was for StanLee to go to work with me on Monday so mom wouldn't have to deal with two dogs on leashes at home (Stan is a little excitable and there is broken glass EVERYWHERE).  Then we all were going to vacate the premises on Tuesday in case the house decided to fall over - me and Stan heading to my sister's basement right from work, mom and Roxie down to Camp Killington - but Mom decided to live dangerously and she stayed until Wednesday.  The demo was too exciting to miss.  We have this photographic record because she stayed - I was too nervous to watch and only caught live action at the very beginning.  Mom did have a couple minor heart attacks, one on Monday and one on Tuesday morning, when the house shook so hard she thought she and Roxie (and the electrician the first time it happened) were goners.

Here are two full days of destruction, with date stamps in the corner so you can see how quickly it happened.  The first few are the ones I took before my nerves got the best of me and I went to work:


That's Troy in the blue hoodie and Bryan in the blue plaid.






Adios, garage.  That was all I could handle - the next batch of pictures is from mom.  She spent almost all day standing outside in the rain, watching and documenting.











This is the picture I posted on Facebook, with a caption that said, "It might be a Monday if you come home from work to find your house torn down and all that's left is a rusty old bicycle...."


They found it under the house.  With a telephone pole.  Having only seen a couple of mom's pictures over the course of the day, seeing it in person was a bit startling:




I have so many thoughts about that last picture -- so many.

Here's the view from the guest room window at the end of the day:


So Monday was total shock and awe, but Tuesday requires a little bit of commentary.  StanLee and I went to work and mom took a million pictures between 9am and noon-ish.  I whittled them down to these:


That's Troy underneath the trailer and Mike up above trying to figure out how the damn thing is attached to the house.  Note the lovely green walls of what used to be Studio B, a/k/a the trouse bathroom.  Hello corner shower.


That next picture is Troy cutting the steel trailer frame into pieces so he could pick them up with the excavator.  Here's a quick video with a surprise ending:


I'm so glad mom got that footage - it's the excavator running over a fire extinguisher!


And we have full separation.



I came home mid-afternoon to see the progress since I wouldn't be back in town until Thursday afternoon.  Here's the guest room window view:


And here's the circumnavigation:






And here goes the last piece of the puzzle:


I will be picking random bits of that old shitty insulation off of the ground for the rest of my days.  With broken glass.  And pieces of plastic Christmas ornaments that we somehow missed (I swear all those cabinets were empty!).  What a crazy two days.  Aside from the pile of metal that is still in my yard, the "removal" part of the project is done and it's time to start putting it back together.

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him.  We have the technology."

Wow, I'm seriously dating myself with that one.

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