After a flurry of activity with the deconstruction, the demolition and the removal of some of our trees, we ended up with a field and a lull in the action.
When it snowed one day, you couldn't see the mud and sawdust - just a field of snow. It was a peaceful sight, but a jarring one when we realized that this empty field is where the home in which we lived for ten years once stood.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
I get my revenge on the tulip poplars . . .
Ever since we first moved onto the Shady back in 2002, Heather has had the use of the garage (usually for parking, sometimes as a staging area for projects) and I have parked on the street in front of the house.
Along with the joys of having snowplows essentially bury my car, various balls, balls, bikes, and scooters bouncing off the car, burning seats in the summer and inches of ice and snow fused to the car in winter, my poor beleaguered "Spencer" (for those of you not in the know, Spencer was the fastest train on Sodor, the land of Thomas the Tank Engine - and yes, Heather's van is "Lady," the pretty girl train with whom all of the boy trains are in love) was the victim of the tulip poplars in my yard, particularly the poplar in the front yard.
Oaks drop acorns, and other species of trees drop various nuts and seeds, but most trees only drop stuff other than leaves once per year. Tulip poplars, on the other hand, drop stuff continuously. Helicopters, flowers, pods, and other random bits that I can't identify, along with enough pollen to turn my car yellow for a few months every spring. At one service appointment, the technician commented that he had never seen an air filter more clogged than Spencer's. Nearly every day, as I got into Spencer to head to work, I would pull a handful of that night's poplar droppings out of the air intake.
With that as background, you will understand my sheer joy in watching my tormenter over the years come down.
Sadly, however, after consulting with a few arborists and evaluating the health of the trees in our back corner, Heather and I decided to take the huge triple trunk tree in the back corner of our lot down to 15 feet. It was an incredible tree, but had been dropping ever-larger pieces during the recent major storms over the last few years (sorry Stan), and had the potential to take out the regional transmission power lines behind the house, one of the neighbors houses, or even our new house. The other trees around it were both stunted and twisted away from this monster as well, since it pretty much monopolized the sunlight in a decent area. We are hoping that these smaller trees will now be able to grow more naturally and fill in the hole in our forest canopy.
We're also hoping to be able to use the three remaining 15 foot trunks as the base for an awesome tree house, but we'll hold off on that for the time being.
Along with the joys of having snowplows essentially bury my car, various balls, balls, bikes, and scooters bouncing off the car, burning seats in the summer and inches of ice and snow fused to the car in winter, my poor beleaguered "Spencer" (for those of you not in the know, Spencer was the fastest train on Sodor, the land of Thomas the Tank Engine - and yes, Heather's van is "Lady," the pretty girl train with whom all of the boy trains are in love) was the victim of the tulip poplars in my yard, particularly the poplar in the front yard.
Oaks drop acorns, and other species of trees drop various nuts and seeds, but most trees only drop stuff other than leaves once per year. Tulip poplars, on the other hand, drop stuff continuously. Helicopters, flowers, pods, and other random bits that I can't identify, along with enough pollen to turn my car yellow for a few months every spring. At one service appointment, the technician commented that he had never seen an air filter more clogged than Spencer's. Nearly every day, as I got into Spencer to head to work, I would pull a handful of that night's poplar droppings out of the air intake.
With that as background, you will understand my sheer joy in watching my tormenter over the years come down.
Sadly, however, after consulting with a few arborists and evaluating the health of the trees in our back corner, Heather and I decided to take the huge triple trunk tree in the back corner of our lot down to 15 feet. It was an incredible tree, but had been dropping ever-larger pieces during the recent major storms over the last few years (sorry Stan), and had the potential to take out the regional transmission power lines behind the house, one of the neighbors houses, or even our new house. The other trees around it were both stunted and twisted away from this monster as well, since it pretty much monopolized the sunlight in a decent area. We are hoping that these smaller trees will now be able to grow more naturally and fill in the hole in our forest canopy.
We're also hoping to be able to use the three remaining 15 foot trunks as the base for an awesome tree house, but we'll hold off on that for the time being.
Demolition
Unfortunately, deconstruction can't take everything, so once Second Chance was done taking everything they could possibly salvage, the wrecking crew came in to demolish the rest.
Despite Rick's impressive efforts, however, and my attempt to get a little free labor out of Matt and Erich . . .
. . . we eventually had to bring the dude with arguably one of the coolest jobs out there - the job every little boys imagines himself doing when he is playing with his Tonka trucks in the sandbox:
. . . we eventually had to bring the dude with arguably one of the coolest jobs out there - the job every little boys imagines himself doing when he is playing with his Tonka trucks in the sandbox:
Monday, March 18, 2013
The 907 - Deconstruction
we didn't want to just throw all of our old house into the landfill. Plus, there was a lot of really good stuff that could easily be reused. After some research, we chose to donate our old house to Second Chance, a charity out of Baltimore that gets as much leverage as possible out of each donation. They use the deconstruction process itself to provide job training, they reuse an amazing amount of materials from the donated houses, and they then sell the reclaimed materials in their store in Baltimore. The amount of material that ends up being sent to the landfill is a fraction of what would otherwise be landfilled. Great benefits all around.
The 907 is iterating.
Since we never plan to leave Shady Drive (a/k/a "The Shady"), we're tearing down the old house:
 |
| The 907 v1 (after the shrubs were removed) |
To enable our friends and family to follow along on this adventure, we'll be posting pictures, video, and updates here on a regular basis throughout the process.
Over the next few days, I'll be catching up to today with some pictures and video of the deconstruction process, site preparation, digging the basement, and pouring the footers and the basement walls.
Fun times.
Jeff
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