It's a funny thing with demolition. Only a few minutes of heavy blows with the hammer or crowbar produces hours of follow up work and restoration.
You can loose your perspective a little bit - both ways.
Either you feel like , "Aw, look at that pile. It's already so huge we might as well keep going. What's another couple sheets of drywall anyway?"
Or, you can barely breathe, and not because of the dust, but rather you have shocking and sudden clarity on what you've just destroyed, and have a jolting realization that it's up to you to put it all back together again.
These perspectives share the stage.
Sometimes they share the song and dance number, and sometimes, (only briefly), they have a solo act.
One of the welcome gifts for us in restoring Liberty Farm was that Libby has never looked too awful from the outside.
In fact, she can be downright welcoming and cheery standing tall among the trees on the slight rise to the property.
That's her on the day we first met. I saw her first. It wasn't long before I called Weekend Farmer Husband and made arrangements for him to meet me. We wrote an offer within hours of our first meeting.
A few other factors made and still make the property inviting.
Wide open pastures are the perfect canvas for a frame of trees on the property line, and tall grasses bend a hello. Tall old trees stoop to greet us. Ten fenced acres hem us in and define what has seemed like a vast expanse to this city girl. The long U shaped driveway makes an easy entrance and a gentle farewell.
All this loveliness became all the more dear as soon as you walked in the door. Your senses assaulted, all one wanted to do was make it go away.
So we did.
First we removed floor coverings in all sections of the house except the bathroom, kitchen, and back entry.
Above is a photo of one end of the living room and below is the upstairs hallway where the kids bedrooms are.
Then the walls started coming down.
This perspective below no longer exists.
There's now a wall where you see the sawn off 2x4's, and 3 bunks from floor to ceiling on the boys room side and a double closet on the girls side.
The black and blue trim? Oh yeah, that's a thing of the past.
Again, this view has vanished, but the photo was taken from what is now the boys room looking through to what became the girls room.
"Hey guys, have you seen my hammer?"
For reals - our friend's hammer is somewhere in an area landfill.
We never found it in the pile above and eventually the mountain of debris was carted off to the dumpster.
Notice won't you that there's still lap on the walls, studs to frame rooms, and ceilings in these photographs.
I wasn't around to take the pictures, but that all went away.
The upstairs was gutted to the inside surface of the exterior boards, and only one 6-8 foot section of wall remained in the interior space.
We re-framed the entire upstairs save for the one little section of load bearing wall I just mentioned.
I don't exactly remember how long it took us to make this much of a mess.
Confidently, I can assure you that it was only a matter of days.
Thank you Nester for being such a gracious hostess.
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