It is an interesting time on my blog as I’m about to chronicle something that I haven’t chronicled before: tearing down a house and building another one.

Here is the house that is going to be bulldozed in about 1 day (as of the date of this post.) Don’t worry, I’m sure I will have a YouTube video to watch the house demolition, because, heck, that will be interesting to see!

The house was originally built in 1952 and was a single story house at the time. In the early 90s, it was renovated to add a second floor to the home. Sadly, the previous owners (and the bad renovation) led the house to decline over the past 20 years.

We had several architects come through the home in the past six months. They all gave us the same answer: this house cannot be saved. It was cheaper to tear it down.

Pre-House Demolition Recycling

Knowing that it was going to be bulldozed, and we couldn’t save it, we wanted to give it life in another way, and a ‘green’ way. Thus, we partnered with a local company called GreenGoat. GreenGoat saves otherwise discarded building materials and finds new projects that need those materials. In so doing, they save energy, raw materials, and other natural resources wasted when useful materials are tossed away.

They salvaged everything in our house: shutters, appliances, door nobs, sinks, piping, gutters, windows, doors, flooring, doors, roofing materials, landscaping and more. It was then donated and/or sold to other business and projects that now reuse the materials. We also reduced unneeded waste in landfills as a result.

You can see the picture of the house after some of the salvaged work has been done! Notice the garage doors, front door and shutters are gone as compared to the first picture? All of the cars are from the workers getting what they can out of the house.

Here is a sample pic of what used to be the kitchen area in the house. As you can see, what items that would be in a kitchen (sink, fridge, stove, oven, flooring, cabinets) are no longer in there. You can also see some of the items they are removing! They began to remove the wood flooring and trim, as you can see.

I’ll be curious to see if they discover anything behind the walls as the house get torn down this week. (Hidden safe, pile of gold, pile of dead pets? Who knows!)

After the house is demolished, then the next step is removal of many trees. We had an arborist out to look at many of the trees on the property. His first words when he came to look at the landscape? “Wow, this property hasn’t been maintained in awhile.” Turns out, over 15 trees are sick and diseased (including the big tree you see in front of the house in the picture.) So, that will be an interesting process to chronicle too! Stay tuned and follow me on Facebook/Twitter to get the latest updates!

(Want to see some of my favorite “Home Sweet (New) Home” ideas? Check out my Pinterest Board too!