Tearing Down the House...

Moving Day

January 21, 2012 Perry's dad- Dale, decided that it was the day for him to move.

Satellite had been installed in Dale's new home and cut-off in his current house.  He decided it was imperative to move.  Can't separate a man from his tv!  In the midst of freezing temperatures and drizzling rain the move began!  

 The before picture....

Another before picture...

 In the middle of moving...the living room...

Unfortunately, I didn't have the presence of mind to photograph the interior of the house before we began the move. I'd say the freezing temperatures, an on-the-go toddler, me in the middle of writing & defending my comprehensive examinations, graduate school, and Dale's sudden insistence to move had much to do with the the oversight.  I'll have to mine the old family photos for those memories.  

By February, demolition and remodeling officially begins!  Perry worked many late nights digging the footer for the new addition.  Titus loved helping him!  

Our original plan was to tear down the interior walls so we could reconfigure the floor plan, transform the old playroom into a 3-car garage, and add an addition to the front of the house.

  But...

 Problems started showing up...holes like this in the flooring & electric wires chewed in half showed us that we had many unwelcome house guests!  Our electrician cautioned us that if we kept the current wires, our house would very soon burn to the ground.  The entire wall behind the stove was charred black!

Empty spaces in-between the walls & under the foundation were very cozy homes for animals of all kinds.

The three roofs (yes, I said three...all stacked on top of each other) all leaked.  So...

Our plans to remodel drastically change!!!  We discovered it would just be easier to start from scratch instead of "fix" all the concerns.  

Tearing Down The House!  

Until all that is left is the full basement, the gorgeous chimney, and the stone wall.  

The puzzle begins!  Now we must build back the house using the existing basement, foundation, & chimney as a framework.  Can't use a stock plan...so what do we do?  

What any good licensed contractor would do- use spray paint to literally paint a new floor plan onto the existing features!  

  

Our History

Tornado Damage?  Renovation?  Remodel?  You did what!!! Extreme home make-over might just best fit the description of this "under construction" job.  Perry, along with his parents & three siblings, grew up in this fine house- est.1980.    

In fact, as Perry's high school sweetheart, I had the pleasure of eating many wonderful Ruthe-made meals in this house.  And, Perry & I spent many a date-night sitting on the backyard trampoline gazing at the stars wondering where we might be in 10years time.  Remodeling ( a nicer way of saying 'tearing down & rebuilding') the family home never once entered into our thoughts.  But, here we are- 16 years later-  continuing to construct our lives together.

In 2008, we sat down with Perry's dad. Dale was ready to move into something smaller & thought that Perry needed to be living on the main farm.  It sounded appetizing & we were very appreciative of his kind offer, but we just weren't quite ready for that type of commitment.  We wanted time to think & get our finances in order.  We wanted time to plan out how WE could turn Perry's childhood home into our home as a married couple.  We waited, dreamed, schemed, saved, AND in January of 2012 started the process.

Contrary to popular opinion, we didn't have much of a plan in the way of a blue print.  Our main goal was to change the layout to a more open-concept feeling and add on an addition to the front of the house that would accommodate a larger dining room.

At first we thought could do all this by keeping the same roof and keep those other important house features that were already intact....intact. But snakes, extreme electrical problems, three different roofs stacked one on top of the other (that all still leaked- mind you), and a bevy of unwelcome critters convinced us that our remodeling job was going to look more like a demolition.

So, Perry armed himself with a sledgehammer & I armed myself with an arsenal of magazines, pictures I'd been saving for years, and tv station called HGTV.

This blog is to tell the story of our home.

The Philpott Family- re-established 2012.