Grandma's House

So we've been talking about grandma's house coming down and a new one being put into its place, now we figured we better post some pictures. So here goes. It will take a while to upload the pics to our blog. The first picture is of the house when grandma was living in it.

This next picture is after taking the windows out (they were new windows) and also taking the roof off. Also the front door (it was new, too). Notice some cabinets off to the side. Some people came in and took some cabinets to use in their garages or shops or what ever. I went upstairs to look around and behind the drawers I found a glass doorknob (worth about $500) and two fire extinguisher grenades. Here is the fire extinguisher.

These are glass bulbs that are thrown at the base of a fire and break to put the fire out. They are rare because they are made to be broken. One has the color really faded, but the other when cleaned up looks brand new. They officially stop making them in 1910, but some companies still made them up to 1945.

Ellen didn't make it when they started to knock the house down so we didn't get any pictures of them actually knocking the house down. This is just after the fact.

The next picture is the pile after hauling some of the stuff to the dump. It took just over 1 1/2 days to haul it off. I took a half a day off to help haul things. It really wasn't that bad. The weather has been very cooperative.

The next two pictures are after they hauled everything they could to the dump. All of this stuff fell into the basement. The walls of the basement were over a foot thick so we couldn't knock it down with the equipment we had. So they burned everything in the basement. The fire department came just to make sure that nothing got out of hand. I guess it was quite the little marshmallow roasting party.

This is just a pic from the street so you can see what it all looks like. Notice the two bushes that were in front so hopefully you can picture where the front door used to be.

So the company came in and dug out the dirt to start putting in the foundation. Grandma isn't having a basement in because she doesn't want to have stairs in the house. Maybe you can see how big the house is going to be. If you look to the bottom of the screen you can see the ties that form the north of her garden. The house is definitely longer.

You may wonder what ever happened to the basement. Well, Stan was talking with the framers and they asked him what he was going to do with the basement. He said he was going to have to haul in dirt to fill it up. They said that they would love to put the dirt that they dig up and use it to fill in the basement. So that is what they did. They had so much dirt that they have plenty left over. Now they are putting in the forms for the pouring of the cement.

This last one is after they poured the cement. They came today to finish pouring the cement to form the foundation. Hopefully we'll get some pictures of that.

Grandma is sooooooooooo excited for all of this to happen and so are we. She has been so patient in living where she has been. When we were hauling off the wood, we found some of the old logs (it used to be a log home) that at some time or another that had caught fire. Why the house didn't burn down, we don't know. Then in the northeast corner of the house, most of the logs were rotten. Once again how the house just didn't fall in we don't know. It is amazing how fast things have happened. The first of October is when mom decided to build a new house and now the company says that they will bring the house on December 2nd and she should be in the house before Christmas. What a Christmas present.

FYI the house was built in 1924. Uncle Ron was born in the house in 1926. My great grandmother raised her family there (11 kids) and also 6 grandkids. I found some homework in the attic from one of the grandkids. I think the stucco was put on the house around 1948 and it was remodeled in 1984 or about. My great uncles (Dave and Aaron) said they had lost a baseball mitt when they were kids in between the stucco and the logs, but we never found it. Grandma did find a 1941 nickel under the front porch.

Stay tune for more on the house. By the way, the school musical has been this week and we'll post some pictures of McKenzie and maybe a little video too. They did the musical West Side Story.