There now…let’s take a breath! With the demo of the second floor and bump out, it was time to do some clean up. The demo was exciting, don’t get me wrong, but after the crane truck left and the contractors went home, we were looking at a HUGE mess! So today the crew from Gehrke Inc. out of Eldora, IA was here to clean up the mess.  They are a local tiling and excavating company.  They also showed up with a lot of large equipment and trucks to haul it away!

When we arrived, the pile had already begun. Actually, the pile had grown quite substantial by the time we got there. The excavator was busy crushing the roof and wall sections into manageable pieces. Originally, the plan had been to dig a giant pit in the northeast corner of our acreage.

However, the weather pattern of multiple rain days changed that plan. With it being so wet, we opted to have it hauled away. I’m sure there will be some give and take to the budget. That decision will “take” from our budget.  The nice thing is that we don’t have to try and manage another enormous bonfire (although, that would have been a fun blog post).

After the wood was hauled away, all the brick that was taken off earlier was gathered up. When the brick first came off the house, we thought we’d be picking it all up ourselves. After talking to Gehrke’s crew, they said it would take less than an hour to load up all the brick. A couple of trips with the side dump semi truck was all it took. Um, that was a no brainer!

Wow! Look at that! Eventually that small hill will be dug out for daylight egress windows in the basement. We sometimes stand on that hill and tell the boys that their rooms will be right there.

Finally, they began prepping the dirt on the west side of the house for the garage and removal of the bump out. The giant stump below was right where our driveway will be going. It’s fun to watch how quickly heavy machinery can make work of something this big!

I am always amazed at how much the acreage has changed since the beginning. So, I had to include this collage! The top picture is from late 2018. We had just taken down the machine shed. The next picture is from early 2019 when we took down the trees in the new front yard. The next picture is from last week. The crane had just removed the roof. The last picture is the current house (except for the tree stump, it came out the next day). I love coming across a scene that I have photographed periodically through clean-up and deconstruction!

Before & After

Till next time…