The Walls Came Tumbling Down

I think we underestimated how stressful it would be to see our house be taken apart. We weren't sure how they'd go about it, since the top floor was done correctly and it seemed like a pretty big waste of time and resources to scrap the whole thing. Last weekend, we were out at the site walking through the house, and a rented crane was delivered while we were there. We talked to the crane owner about what he thought might happen (though, to be clear, Estridge only rented the crane from him - he wasn't going to be doing any of the actual work), which was reassuring.

By Tuesday (Day 58), our house had gone from this:

To this:

It was hard to not be a little bit heartbroken. What the ultimately did was remove the roof panels and trim that had been done, then used a crane to remove the trusses, like this:

Then they used two lift cranes in the front and back, along with about 20 mechanical jacks, to brace the top story of the house. Then the vertical two-by-fours were taken down, resulting in a gigantic mess of lumber.

Once those boards were taken down, the second story of our house was gradually lifted, inch by inch, until it was about a foot higher than it originally was. Support beams were put in place, and then they could begin replacing the two-by-fours with new all new lumber.

As you can probably imagine, this process took most of this week and it's been pretty gut-wrenching. We know it's being done correctly and we're grateful that the building team has worked so quickly and efficiently. Still, we're hopeful that this misstep will be as rough as it gets, and it will be smooth sailing from here on out!