Catch-Up 1: First Came Demolition

Just when you think I won't finish my tiny house in my lifetime (or in anyone else's lifetime, for that matter), I actually have progress to report.

Up until now, I have been too busy to blog. I decided months ago to sacrifice reporting on my progress in order to make a lot of steady progress. At some point in the spring, I decided this had to be the year I tore down my wreck of a house and replaced it with the JayBee. The JayBee was too far out of level and it couldn't be easily leveled back up, so I didn't feel I could work on it where it was. I had limped the wreck of a house through yet another winter, but it was so clearly beyond its useful life, I knew it had to be put out of its misery.

All of my non-working time in the spring and summer went into packing and organizing stuff, selling and giving away loads of stuff, and endlessly moving stuff from one location to another. Summer here was unseasonably wet, which added to the challenge of moving so much stuff around. I managed to sell 25 pieces of furniture and appliances by advertising on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. While it all went relatively smoothly, it took a lot of time. For many weeks, I continuously put a steady stream of things at the end of my driveway under a "free stuff" sign, and most of it magically disappeared! I filled my car multiple times with things I donated to Goodwill. And, thankfully, I live near a fabric recycling bin, because I loaded that thing up three or four times. I am blowing by these months of labor with this brief description because it's the boring part. But! I've said this before, and I'll say it again: The downsizing part of this project was the hardest part for me--harder than anything I've encountered during the construction process. I got so burned out on it; I thought it might kill me. (No joke.) I had the last stuff moved out of the house only one hour before demolition began. (Phew!)

Now for the more interesting stuff...

The river was quiet and pretty before 7:00AM on demo day.

I walked around the house and thanked it for its years of service and for all the life lived and memories created there.

All of my remaining belongings (and the things not yet installed in the JayBee) were stored in these U-HAUL U-BOXES lining the driveway.

There wasn't a lot of space to work with, so the dumpster ended up really close to the JayBee.

The first thing the excavator took was the ramshackle addition on the side of the house that I had used to store wood and tools.

The garage went next.

I had to go to work as the tear-down of the main house started, so I missed that part.

At the end of the day, this is what was left:

I loved watching the skill with which the driver maneuvered the excavator. All of the pieces of foundation wall were carefully laid down in the crawl space--to minimize the waste that had to be hauled off, and to minimize the amount of fill that had to be brought in.

Hard to believe there was ever a house here!

Mounds of fill was brought in to raise up where the new shop/office will be. That's right: I'm having a wood shop/office space built on the site of the old garage.

No small blessing during the demo and excavation days: It didn't rain! Miracles do occur.