Monday, September 6, 2021

Had a house demolished ~

I had a house demolished. I inherited some of my family's land and an almost 100-year-old house that my grandparents had lived in. It was the house where my father grew up.

It was a good house. I had several good memories there. My grandmother and grandfather would do their little decorations for Christmas. Grandma made a big deal about having the family get-together when we could for Christmas gift exchange. It was one of the only times in the year that I got to see my aunt and her side of the family. They lived in town and we didn't really cross paths with them. And so it was a special occasion when we got to see them.

My fondest memories of that house were of those Christmas celebrations out on the screen porch. But there are other memories. I remember when I was growing up my brother and I slept on the front screen porch. It was closed in with jalousie windows. Grandma and Grandpa did not have air conditioning out there and so summer nights were hot and those jalousie windows were open wide with screens keeping most of the bugs out. One of those summer nights we were sleeping and both of us woke up. We heard the sound of something walking outside of one of the windows. It sounded just like a person walking slowly and carefully. My brother and I got scared and finally got up enough courage to run into the kitchen and tell Dad and Grandpa. Grandpa just chuckled and said it's probably an armadillo and explained that armadillos sound like a person when they're walking in the leaves. My brother and I went back out and lay down and then we listened to the armadillo do his thing until we fell asleep.

I remember the blue bedroom was where we slept when we moved next door to my grandparents. That was when my Mom and Dad were having our house built on an acre property. The blue bedroom had an air conditioner installed in the window. Grandma would turn that thing on around seven at night and by the time I went to bed at 9pm or 10pm it was freezing in that room. Midsummer nights and I had to have two blankets on top of me to stay warm. It was amazing!

I also remember before they got central heat and air installed in the house they used little electric heaters in the bedrooms to warm them up just a little bit during the winters. But they had a big propane furnace in the kitchen. It looked like a wood-burning furnace but it used propane and the tank was outside. It would be 35° outside and Dad would take me over to visit with Grandma and Grandpa and they would have the heater going so hot it was 90° in that room. And of course the doors to the rest of the house were closed to keep the heat in, so the rest of the house was freezing but that room was 90°.

After grandma died and when the house was given to me by my Dad nobody had lived in it for almost 10 years. Dad didn't have anything to do with it because he felt emotional every time he would go over there. Grandpa had died in the house. All of Dad's good memories of Grandma were gone with grandma's death. And Dad just didn't want to deal with the sadness and the ghosts.

A couple of years ago my wife and I were talking about it and we decided that we would never live in that house. It was too old and it didn't really fit what we wanted as a lifestyle. And it would take way too much money to fix it up and repair it. Just before that decision the house had developed a leak in the roof that got so bad that it was going into one of the bedrooms and the screen porch. A new roof would've cost more money than we were willing to spend. And the house had developed foundation problems and walls are cracking in the middle of the house. Comparing the costs to repair it to the cost to have it demolished we decided to go ahead and have it torn down. For us that was a better decision than letting it stay standing and then possibly having kids or drug users or squatters or whatever get in there and do things they shouldn't be doing in property that they didn't own that could incur liability in our lives.

My son offered to set things up to have it demolished and he did a good job coordinating that. Once the decision was made and a budget was laid out he got estimates, picked the company to work with, coordinated the disconnection of electricity, etc. And then he went down and oversaw the actual demolition of the house. He did a good job! And I'm very appreciative that he took this project on.

I feel strange about the whole thing. I feel like it was the right thing to do but find myself second-guessing, wondering, and all that sort of thing. But the decision was made and the action was taken. Now we are past it and we get to forge ahead into the bright new future.

It still feels weird to have had a house demolished.