Tearing down the old house

The time seemed right to finally tear down the old, blown down house on the prop. It was fun to show people, but it was on prime space, and the time seemed right to finally deal with it.

Here are some before shots documenting how it looked as we first found it.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

At this point, we'd torn it down to floor joists. Notice that they are just cedar posts laid directly on the ground. They were in surprisingly good shape for sitting there at least 40+ years.

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We threw all the rotted wood onto our burn pile. There wasn't much to salvage. We did find some interesting old beer cans though. They were a brand called Barbarossa from Cincinnati. They were so old that they didn't even have a pull top. Just triangular holes where they'd used a can opener to open it. I checked the Internet and found that pull-tabs weren't invented until 1962. That fact, along with the size of the cedars around the house (as well as no sign of electricity) would date this from at least the 50's or early 60's, although it could be older. However, I don't think it would be much older than the 50's. I don't think the cans would have lasted that long.

From Drop Box

We were able to salvage quite a few cedar poles that were used for rafters and uprights, but the stack below was all of the milled lumber we were able to save.

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