The Shack That No Longer Was

Life doesn't ever follow the plans that you make, does it? You get an idea, you have faith you can accomplish the goal and live the dream, and then life throws you a nasty Corey Kluber style curve ball.

We finished demoing the house and started to plan on how to put it together. Since we were moving a couple of walls and had a couple questions, including the size of the new beam we would need to support the second floor, we decided to get the opinion of a professional. A very nice gentleman arrived, walked through our little dream shack by the lake and proceeded to crush all of our hopes and dreams in the span of one afternoon. Okay, so I'm being a tad bit dramatic. It was his opinion, that the land we had was worth what we paid for the house but we would be better off knocking down the house and starting over. Nothing was to code, framing was an old type of balloon framing, foundation was crumbling, one room was built on top of an old patio, etc, etc, etc. He said even if we continued to just remodel the house, we'd basically have to start over anyways just so the city wouldn't condemn it. He walked out the door and in about 5 minutes Scott and I made the decision to demolish the whole thing. We obviously don't dwell on life altering decisions too long.

Scott immediately started calling around for estimates to raze the house. Here is the biggest lesson I've learned through this process: when hiring anyone for any sort of project, call and get at least 5 estimates. You wouldn't believe how many different price ranges there are, like thousands and thousands of dollars of difference. We went with a local farmer that had some time since it was off season. He was the cheapest and we figured it doesn't take much skill to knock down a house.

On a cold, sunny morning in March of 2014, the house that stood on this property for 75 years was reduced to rubble in a total of one hour and 15 minutes. To this day that hurts my soul. I'd be lying if said I didn't regret this decision on some level or that the following photos don't make me want to cry. I'm a huge believer in preserving history, no matter how big or small, and I failed to do so with this house. But like I said, curve balls are nasty and we can only handle what we can handle.

We loved you while we had you...

I kept this brick along with some of the original doors and windows of the house. I have to memorialize the house in some way.

So that's our curve ball. But just like baseball, life will eventually throw you that one perfect pitch that you knock straight out of the park. You just have to be patient...