I've got a little catching up to do as we decided to start building in 2010 rather than wait another 2 years. So.... After purchasing the property in Murrysville, the first thing to do was tear down the existing house so we could add the property to our insurance. I read a "Dummies" book for building a custom home and it recommended you avoid buying property with a house on it to demolish. Yikes! What are we getting into? Fortunately, this property met the criteria for being a fairly low risk tear down: the land is actually worth more without the house and it is in a nice area where there are many nice homes. I knew nothing about finding someone to do the work. I contacted a few excavators and selected the only one who seemed interested enough in the job to follow-up with me. He was a young guy who had been in business on his own for a relatively short time, having worked with his dad for several years. But I figured it would be a lot more difficult to mess up tearing down a house than putting one up. He actually did a good job and really cleaned up the site.I had hoped to salvage some of the house (windows, cabinets, fixtures) to minimize how much went into a land fill, but I could not make any timely arrangements with Construction Junction in Pittsburgh. They will de-construct a house to recycle the building components. We did save the light fixtures and curtains to donate and we gave the hot water heater to the excavator. We also gave the refrigerator away--so not everything went to waste. Lastly, I saved something for me--a glass door knob set that was in one of the doors. I hope to use it in the new house.
The morning of the tear down (in September 2008), we let Tania and our exchange student, Christina, miss the beginning of school to watch the demolition. Christina had only been with us for a few weeks--I wonder what she thought of all this. It was exciting--much more dramatic than the video indicates. As the school buses passed by, the kids were all crowded against the windows to see what was going on and Tania had fun waving to them. It was also a little sad to think that this house, which only one family built and lived in, was coming down. It was built in 1948 and many people in Murrysville sent their children to this house where Mrs. Gordon babysat them. It took only 30 minutes to tear it down. It took another 2 1/2 days to haul away all the debris and fill in the hole. We now have our very own vacant lot.
