August 22, 2012 - Demolition Day!

August 22, 2012 – Demo Day!

A few delays in getting machinery out, so our demolition was delayed until Wednesday, August 22.  My Dad’s birthday!  Wish he could have been here to share it with us.

The weekend prior to demolition Ibby & I had the chance to go up and see the cottage one last time.  Bill’s crew had taken out the ductwork and electrical wires, as well as a lot of the insulation and drywall.  A few small trees on the side of the house were taken down.  The bird’s nest that came out of the soffits was huge! 

 

There were just a few random walls left that Ibby & I took the opportunity to take a few whacks with the sledgehammer. I’ve always wanted to do that! Guess I’ve watched way too many decorating shows over the years…

 

 

The big day finally arrived.  Had a lousy sleep – kind of a nervous excitement!  We arranged for offsite parking for family & friends, and coffee in hand made it up there for 8:00 am.  Tyler on the excavator started promptly at 8:30 as promised.  He started at the front of the house and first clawed off the deck, then worked his way through the inside of the house from front to back.  He was a real artist with that big piece of equipment.  All in all it wasn’t completely down until around 2:00 pm, but that also included delays in getting dumpsters delivered to put it all in.  Again, guess I’ve been watching Extreme Home Makeover too much, but I expected it to go a lot faster with one real definitive “swing” taking it down.  Instead Tyler took his time and was very careful to keep everything contained and not spilling onto our neighbour’s property.  They took real caution with an old brick chimney that was no longer used but right on the property line.  One foundation wall was kept, and the others taken down since we are expanding the footprint.  Because of that remaining wall, we are technically a renovation as opposed to a new build.  New build levies are $10,000 so that was key.

We all took a break in the morning for a champagne & orange juice toast with friends, family & neighbours.  No celebration would be complete without Timbits either!  Later in the morning Jaime and his housemates were able to come up and see the last of it go down, so we ordered pizzas for everyone.  Jaime kindly told us he would fix the house for us.

 

Many thanks to Theresa for use of her bathroom, and to Judy and Helen for snapping pictures along the way.  Ibby also took video, so if we figure out how to post on the blog we’ll let you know.  But for now we’ll just let the pictures tell the story!

 

The deck comes off!

 

No turning back now!

 

Sunroom roof has collapsed

 

Working through the house

 

 

OOH! The Claw! 

 

Side View (lake is to the right side of photo)

 

The red wall was the back of our kitchen

 

There goes the old chimney!

 

 

And she's down!

 

The back porch was still standing!

 

 

Cracking the champagne 

 



We need to photoshop Helen Carey in here!  Thanks for taking these pics!

 Our contractor Bill, who graciously abstained from champagne while operating heavy equipment!

Jaime in foreground with housemates Kristopher (back left) and Jeremy (back centre). 

House staff Odelia and Andrew on left side of picture.

 

I'll fix it Mom!

 

August 2012 - Condemned Cottage

August 2012

Now the cottage looks like it’s condemned!  Totally open at this point for the squirrels and critters to take up residence.  Ibby says it looks like a Who-house after the Grinch went through --- nothing but hooks & wire!

So now we’re just waiting for confirmation of our demolition date.  We have a party planned with a lot of friends wanting to watch from the shoreline.  It's been hectic times and a heck of a lot of work to get here, but glad we're finally ready to move on to the next step.

I’ve turned my attention to working on picking out the exterior things so they can be ordered.  Coordinating windows, siding & garage doors from different manufacturers with different colours has been a real challenge.  The guys at the local lumber store have been terrific, and a lady at a local paint store spent 20 minutes helping me out even though I wasn’t spending a dime there (at least yet!).  We want something neutral so that it ages well but also something that fits in our neighbourhood of wooden cottages.  I think we’re almost there – still waiting for some samples to arrive – so stay tuned!

Next posting --- the demolition!

August 2012 - Habitat Salvages

August 2012

Everything remaining was taken out that first week of August, and by August 7 Habitat for Humanity’s salvage crew came out.  They were able to take windows, doors, light fixtures, baseboards, and our little apartment-sized dishwasher.  They couldn’t take the old kitchen cabinets as they were built in place.  Items will be sold at the local Re-Store which then funnels proceeds to the charity. 

Supervisor Tom cooked fajitas for everyone on a little butane stove, and by 2pm the truck came to haul it all away!  For anyone interested in volunteering, Habitat Durham is starting a new build in Oshawa that will last for at least a year or two.

July 2012 - We Dismantle the Cottage

July 2012

The month started out with a visit from my brother Tim & Nita’s kids – nephew George, niece Angiee, and her friend Brandi.  We shared a fun sightseeing day in Niagara Falls, and they were able to see our condo for the first time and the cottage for the last time.

So now that we were officially moved out of our Pickering house, it was time to clear out the cottage before it was demolished.  Even though we THOUGHT we didn’t have a lot of things there – it was after all a cottage – it really added up!  Many more trips to the storage locker.  The big task here has been disconnecting the mechanicals.  We arranged to have the following physically removed:  oil tank, furnace, central air, plumbing, septic system parts, electrical box and woodstoves & chimney pipes.  We kept whatever we could including our clawfoot tub, the water pump, heater & pressure tank, some electrical fixtures including ceiling fan and woodstoves.  More stuff to store! 

And we tried to find homes for other building materials that were salvageable.  Laminate flooring, pine tongue & groove paneling, interlock patio bricks, and our old fridge were all given away to neighbours.  Others dug out hostas.  Even the roofing vent found a new home.  We were down to the studs in quite a few rooms.

Weekends in July also saw Ibby & I working diligently on cleaning up the felled tree in the backyard.  Ibby did the "heavy lifting" with the chain saw, and after he cut it I was dragging away the brush and breaking it down to manageable sizes with a garden pruners.  He was also working on an extreme slope of about 60 degrees to trim the limbs off.  Not to discount the degrees of heat & hot weather we had in July!  We'll have lots of firewood, but there were many days we just ached when we crawled into bed.

We had requested that the hydro be disconnected on Tuesday August 7, however I got a voicemail Friday July 27 saying that it would happen on Monday July 30.  Needless to say, we dropped everything and scrambled to pack whatever we could that weekend while we still had lights and running water.  A lot of disconnection work had already been scheduled for that last week of July / first week of August so we just soldiered on without power.

We’ve had so many people offering great advice along the way.  Things they learned when building or repairing their own homes that we should incorporate right away.  We’ve already had to make some decisions on what to spring for now and what to leave out.  The items we’re splurging on are good windows and things that are now-or-never.  For example, we’re getting a cathedral ceiling in the master bedroom.  An extra few grand for a different roof truss design, but it’s not like we can tear apart our roof and add that in later.

Jaime and his housemates came up to the cottage for a BBQ on Sunday July 29 – as it turned out, the last day we had power and running water.  Our neighbours were kind enough to take the boys out for a boat ride which was a real thrill for them!  Big shout-out THANK YOU to Rob & Cindy Wilson!

June 2012 - House Closed & "Timber!"

June 2012

June started out with another quick trip to see my family in Wisconsin.  Until we had a closing date and knew what we were dealing with we couldn’t plan a trip.  Ibby & I were able to see the care home being considered (still down the road yet) for my Dad. 

 

Then back to packing!  It had to be a strategic packing job, as we needed to evaluate what can be stored for up to 6 months (when the cottage is built), what we need access to but perhaps not every day, and what type of item it is – for example I didn’t want to store photos or papers in storage lockers where there is a potential for water damage.  Movers came (again) June 20 and took some stuff to the condo but packed a lot of our furniture into a POD.  I have an aversion to putting good wood furniture into a non-climate-controlled storage locker, so we tried to get as much furniture as we could into the POD with the left-overs like dining room chairs at the condo (in the spare bedroom).  The POD is stored in their Oshawa warehouse.  Filled the first storage locker, and rented a second.  We closed on the house June 27.  It was good to be back down to 2 places again (condo & cottage) but we were definitely not settled!

Also in June we had a huge tree to deal with.  There was a large mature maple tree in our cottage backyard that was not only close to our home but also overhanging some hydro wires.  Hydro came and evaluated and deemed it should come down.  They would take it down, but it would be up to us to deal with the wood.  We were also told they would bring it down in sections by an arbourist with ropes and pulleys.  Unfortunately they came out without telling us, took one hack, and yelled “Timber!”.  They felled the tree as one big whole trunk back onto a steep hillside of the shared forest.  It was a huge mess, and Ibby & I spent several weekends clearing up branches & brush.  Ibby had to rent a bigger chain saw to chop the trunk into sections, and still has a lot of work to do splitting the round logs this fall.