demolition, day 1

ugh, it's been such a busy time here at the house of wan.  because after almost a decade of living here and almost two years after redoing the back yard, we've finally started on a major remodel!

i actually can't believe it's really happening.  we've been working with an architect for a couple of years and made so many changes and created a plan B and then went back to the original idea and then shopping for a contractor and a designer and and and... it's a lot.  total first world problems, though, i know.  and then we finally got going for real and started packing up the house - man, i hate packing so much.  in fact, we'd even looked around to see if there were any other homes in the area that might work.  i mean, if we were going to pack up anyway it wouldn't really matter if we were packing to move out or packing for the renovation, right?  but the market is so insane around here, nothing was any better than what we've already got.  and so we decided to stick with our plan.

of course, we kept getting pushed back while we were rapidly emptying everything into boxes in the garage.  and what we didn't want to keep, we either sold or donated.  and then at last, demolition began yesterday morning.  i took a few pictures of the empty house to document the whole process, and it's really weird to see it like this.

here's the living room:

looking in from the front door towards the dining room, with the back yard a little further out:

the weird little nook that we never did really get to utilize, leading into the laundry room:

my kitchen!  it's gonna be a long time before i get to cook or bake cookies at home.  i hope i still remember how when this is all over.

this is the back room that was originally a bedroom, and the only doorway to the back yard.  so weird.  

the old lady's room that became my sewing room.  she's in mourning over losing the wallpaper and the hot pink wall she picked out so long ago.  this is going to turn into a very, very small home gym.

the hallway that ends with our room, the bean's room and the two existing bathrooms.

by the time the guys were done for the day, it looked like this:

everything we own is either in the garage, the back yard, or our bedroom.  oh, our room is such a disaster and i know the hub is twitching like mad every time he looks at it.  i've gotta do some organizing in there before he explodes.  and now when we step out of our room into the hall this is all we see:

the hub swears it's all going to be done by summer.  i think he's crazy.  this kind of stuff always takes longer than planned, by at least a couple of months, right?  my personal guesstimate is at least six months to completion.  and so in the meantime the dogs, the bean and the two of us are living in two bedrooms, two bathrooms and the back yard.  

man, i've never wished to be wrong so hard in my whole life.  heh.