The demolition of the old house on our lot, which we had been living in for 3 1/2 years, was waiting on us finding a suitable rental.  From living in the old house, to the demolition, was a whirlwind.  It went something like this:

Monday: look at a rental
Tuesday: signed a lease
Thursday: moved
Friday to the following Friday: exploratory demo + material removal
Following Monday: demo

We spent about a week doing the exploratory work to better understand the history of the old house, removing any materials we wanted to save, and having folks come by to remove useful stuff.   We managed to give away almost everything of value and are happy knowing that parts of the house will continue to live on somewhere – doors, windows, vanities, counters, cabinets, hardware,  and applicances.  I wish we could have saved some more of the redwood materials in the house, like the floor joists and ceiling rafters, but we would have had to disassemble the house piece-by-piece to save those, which would have been very expensive.  We did manage to pull a dozen or more out of the rubble.

Last Monday, just a week and a half after we moved out, the demolition started.  I can’t begin to explain how fascinating (and sad) it was.  Here are a few choice shots of the process.

The demolition was not without problems. The excavator developed two hydraulic leaks, which delayed things 24 hours, and the truck had one of its suspension air bags popped.  In all, it took about 4 hours to go from a house to a pile of rubble, and about a day to haul most of it away.  In sheer bulk, the house, not including the concrete, amounted to 12 truck loads like this.

This is what the back part of the lot looks like now.