Construction began at 7am on November 18th, 2002. I arrived at the house at about 8am to post the permit and there was already a dumpster in the drive, and guys on the roof of the carport, tearing off shingles.
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By the end of the first day of demolition, the room addition
was gone, as was the redwood staircase I'd labored over, and never
finished, back in the days when I thought I'd make a wine cellar out of
the cave under the office.
The trailer court patio cover is gone, as is the bougainvillea and the orange tree on the side of the house. |
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On the side of the house, the carport and swamp cooler are also gone. (The flash was doing something funky, and I got what looks like dust on the lens. Sorry.) It's amazing how much lighter it is inside the house, once the kitchen and living room windows receive some sunlight. (This picture was taken after the sun went down. Imagine some sunlight, okay.) |
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By Day Two, the much-hated Mesquite tree is coming down. |
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| At the back of the house, it's
beginning to look a bit like Bosnia.
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Here's a detail showing the back wall, next to the purple
door frame. You can see where the original window was, which was probably
similar to the big windows at the front of the house, as well as how it
was boarded up and plastered over. You can also see the original brick
colors. The majority of the house was brown, with the arch details in a
red brick. |
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Just for comparison purposes, here's what the house looked like Easter, 2002. In the lower left hand corner of the picture, the patio appears to be bordered by a strip of concrete. According to my next door neighbor, back in the eighties the owners were going to add a "dining room" at the back of the house. They started digging the foundation, which you can see part of. They ran it to the property line before the neighbor put a stop to it. |
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| The tree and driveway are almost gone, but the cats aren't. | |
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The patio and cellar are gone, as is the spindly little tree
that used to be in the backyard.
And there's the ramshackle garage that Leisa would love for a backhoe or crane to hit. |
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Foundation detail. The concrete was full of any kind of
metal they could find to reinforce the concrete. There were apparently two
car axles, as well as a bedspring. The water pipe was broken during the demolition and all the water was shut off to the inside of the house. |
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The demo guys must have run out of room for the accursed
mesquite tree in their dumpster, and started hauling it out to the alley.
I still haven't heard from Marilyn, the owner of the house where all this
stuff is dumped. Week Three update: The stuff is gone. |
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I don't think of this so much as "losing a driveway," but more as "gaining some really cool looking 'DANGER' tape." |
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Everything is gone. The house is almost back to its original condition. If you look closely at Roberta's carport, one of the supports is whiter than the others. The guy running the backhoe snagged the original support and pulled it while he was dragging concrete and rebar into the front yard. He also knocked a couple of pickets out of her fence. The gap is covered by the board.
Just one picture from Day Five. It's hard to see Leisa in this picture--she just blends right in. The way to spot her is by that shiny thing on her left hand.
They brought the dumpster and loaded up the big pile of rubble and departed. The demo guys were gone by the time we got there around noon.
It's now almost like my first year or so in the house: My water doesn't work; my gas is shut off and the meter's gone; my electricity only works in a few rooms, and in Week Two, the electricity will be off entirely. My phone still works, though!
