Tear Down

The old house is down.  As anyone who has driven by or read a local paper knows, we did our demolition last Friday and Saturday.  After two days of clearing it out (who knew such a small space could house such a large volume of crap!) the folks at Tam Construction pulled the block and brick off carefully, gently even, and hauled the bricks away for re-use.

We hauled parts of the place away to storage, the parts that will be re-used.  That included the beer walk-in cooler, register system, computers and some of the wine racks and fixtures.   All of the good wine went to my house where it will be well taken care of!  We hope to have at least a little of it left to sell when we re-open.  :-)

When it came time to pull it apart, they started with the concrete block section on the back that was added to the building in about 1961.  It offered up very little resistance.  When it was off the original brick rear could be seen and to my surprise, it was also painted white.  I assumed that the white paint over the brick started when they converted it from a house to a convenience store but it must have started long before that.

Finally, the main part of the structure was pulled at and bricks fell easily.  The interior was almost all rotted including all the floor joists and subfloor.  The bricks, which all had paint and often plaster on them as well as mortar, were transported to a storage site where they will be cleaned and re-used on the new building facade. 

Construction should begin in earnest within the next 10 days or so as we begin to move dirt and dig footers for the retaining wall that will hold up the upper parking pad as well as the building itself.