Like Extreme Makeover Home Edition without celebrites or a strange crew of dirbikes coming to demolish a house.  When we moved to the inn, just up the street from us sat a house, a farmhouse style house, abandoned.  It sat on a large piece of property and was a good sized house.  We asked neighbors and were told it has been vacant for a long time, and that the only things living there were rats.  Ouch.  They said it was owned by siblings who got the house when their mother died and that it was split up into apartments.  It was in bad shape but would look amazing restored.

We looked up the tax record and sent the registered tax owner a letter.  And then a second letter, but neither were answered.  And the house sat.

For a while there was speculation that people had moved in.  There were curtains in the front windows and plants.  But never any car, any people to be seen, or any lights on.  Then there was a yard sale last summer.  The inside of the house wasn’t open but the front door was, and the front room was full of lumber, trim, and bannister pieces, like someone was going to work on the house.  But the person holding the garage sale said they were getting ready to sell it.  Then nothing happened, for nearly a year.

Then a few months ago a for sale sign went up.  Everyone in the neighborhood was talking about.  What a steal, it was listed for basically the value of the land. A fantastic price.  There was still no way we could afford it or get financing for it.  And then our friends and neighbors Luke & Whitney who we met through the neighborhood association bought it!  We were so happy, we knew they would do right by this house, they aren’t the type of people to just pull down a house because it is old or challenging, they are the kind of people to preserve the character of a house and improve it stature.  YAHOO!  We were so excited for them.

They started improving right away, limbed up trees, cut brush, had trees saved, took down dangerous ones, took up the grass along the nature strip, mulched, put in a little garden bed on the corner, it was really starting to look better without even touching the house, and that is saying a lot.  People say we have the perfect haunted house, our house had nothing on this house.

And then the inspection reports came in, and then the pest report, structural reports, and they kept asking professionals, and they all said the same thing that it was too far gone.  It had been sitting empty for at least 11 years, a tree had started growing through the roof and into the attic, it had mold, termites, carpenter ants, dry rot, from the bottom to the top…it was past saving.  Sigh, but this meant we got to see it torn down!

It also meant that Luke & Whitney could choose to build whatever they wanted in its place, but again they aren’t those kind of people, they are building roughly the same house that they tore down.  It is very cool.

This morning at 7am the alarm went off, and we scrambled to get down the street.  We told our guests we would be back to serve them breakast around 8:30 – 9am, but we had to go see the house teardown get started.  Well we didn’t just get to see it started, we saw the whole thing come down and get squashed.  It is amazing how a machine that big can seem so precise.  You could really see how the wood was really in bad shape.  Usually when you see something break it kind of snaps, like a tree, its jagged, but still mostly whole bar the break.  The siding, roof, and wood literally shattered, splinters everywhere.    They started in the front, as the house was a T shape, and worked back to where the two part joined, and then he pushed the rest to the left and it nearly just fell over, then he drove around the back and like a T Rex taking down another dinosaur the jaws went through the top of the roof and the whole thing came down.

By 7:50 the house was down and we headed home to finish breakfast.  We had planned ahead and the scones and fruit were already done.

Now the excitement is to see the progress of the new house!  Can’t wait.  You can see the progess too at www.1004central.info