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Grandmother's house comes down!

... I understand. Sometimes an old building has to die a natural death. Or, in this case, it's more like the 95 year old guy in hospice care getting a few extra doses of morphine to send him over the edge.
No need to let this house suffer the indignity of actually having the roof fall in and trees grow up through the front porch.

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I was helping an elderly neighbor clean out her attic one day, and I noticed that her roof rafters looked like they were truly 2" wide.
They weren't rough-hewn, though. They seemed to be finished the same smoothness with clean 90 degree corners like any two-by dimensional lumber you'd buy today, but just thicker.
Her house was built in the middle 1950s.
 
I bet there was True 2x4's and 2x10's maybe even some 2x12's that built that home !!!!
This had rough sawn 4x4 framing on 2ft centers in the walls and some big wooden beams holding the floor system. Pretty amazing that something built on stacked up rocks could stand for so many years. And yes we salvaged several of the beams. You can still see the marks from the sawmill blade in them.
 
... I understand. Sometimes an old building has to die a natural death. Or, in this case, it's more like the 95 year old guy in hospice care getting a few extra doses of morphine to send him over the edge.
No need to let this house suffer the indignity of actually having the roof fall in and trees grow up through the front porch.

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I had resisted tearing it down while my mother still lived even though she had told me to do it several times. Sadly she passed away back in August and I inherited the rest of her property. I found out after she passed that she had been paying property taxes on that house even though it had been uninhabited for the last 30+ years.
 
what was the total for the teardown?
Well just settled up and the cost for the demo, clean up, hauling all the debris away, dressing up the ground,and spreading hay was $4K. I got several estimates before starting this and the closet one to this guy was $10K so I'm pretty happy with it.
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Only thing left is the old concrete kitchen porch with the well that was added in 1943.
 
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