Demolition Days

The first phase of construction for our new house has not actually involved construction at all, but rather deconstruction. Deconstruction of walls. Deconstruction of ceilings. Deconstruction of floors. Deconstruction of so. many. things. This blog will be best illustrated in pictures.

Here's a look at the dining room, for example, before we tore into it.

And here are a few after pics.

And that, my friends, was just one room. Ryan and I -- and a number of awesome friends and family members -- have spent many, many, many long days tearing down this house from the inside out. Check this out.

One of the ballroom walls

And this.

The foyer

The foyer

 And this.

The stairwell

More stairwell.

And this.

The hallway

And this.

The hallway near the stairwell

Plaster and lath, oh my. 

Sometimes, it was really dark and dreary. It was ALWAYS really dusty. 

Future downstairs bathroom 

Mudroom

When we got to the 3rd floor, Ryan started tearing into the attic.

Before long, we were up to our shins in old insulation: a lot of fluffy white stuff (no, TV news friends, not snow) and millions and billions of rice husks.

Turns out that was the recipe for insulation in the early 1900s. Here's a closeup.

 There was more traditional insulation in other places.

Where, you wonder, did all this junk end up? In the dumpster. The biggest kind of dumpster you can get. And we filled about seven of them. No joke.

Not all of it was hauled off to the dump. When it came to some of the more "valuable" items....

... we turned to our friend, Craig, and his popular list online to find people who wanted bricks, tubs and all kinds of scrap metal. A win-win situation since we needed all that stuff removed anyway.

A special shout-out to our friends and family who've been a big help all along the way. This is the only picture I have to prove we are lucky enough to have friends who volunteered their time to help us with all kinds of things (this happens to be the fun chore of removing wallpaper).

Our thanks goes to Katy, H. John, Robin, my Mom and Dad, Jennifer, Jeff, Steve and Angie, and Devon. Our gratitude is even bigger than this crazy house.