Tearing Down the House - well, really tearing down the trailer

After jumping through some hoops, we finally are tearing down the trailer. We found out later that someone actually did want it, but it was too late. I already had a demolition permit for it. And as it turns out, I am so happy that we did not give this defective "home" for someone else to live in because as you clearly see it was not suitable for habitation.

Here are some photos from various stages of demolition. This is about 3 days of demolition.

Early stages in demolition

The main bathroom floor - does every bathroom floor leak?

Bathroom floor underneath the shower unit. Water heater was to the left. Again, does every bathroom floor look like this during demolition? Can you build a bathroom so stuff doesn't leak and rot the subfloor?

Kitchen demo

This is why we air seal the building assembly, specifically so the insulation does not function as a air filter.

A more graphic illustration of an area of air leakage through the insulation. No wonder John couldn't keep his house a comfortable temperature.

John's New House

The Shelter Kit arrived today. It was eventful to say the least. My oldest brother rented an all terrain forklift to unload the truck. Just because it has big knobby tires and weighs several tons doesn't mean it can't get stuck. We got it stuck on the very first load. One tire was in the mud up to the axle with a full load of wood on top. A nightmare. We had to call a wrecker to pull it out. The load was too heavy for his truck so he had to anchor his truck to a tree to pull the forklift out. Once his truck was anchored, then the forklift was pulled from the muck pretty easily. I did not take a photo of the stuck forklift because I was pretty distressed. I should have because now we may be able to laugh about it.

The excitement did not end with the stuck forklift however. 2 loads fell from the forklift but I don't think any wood was damaged.

Here are some views of John's house in its current state.

You can see one of the dumped loads near the road. We had to load it on the forklift by hand.

So there has been some movement in the getting ready to build. At least we are going forward. I am already sore.

The ER Again and Progress on the House

You know, I work in an ER. I do not want to go there on my day off, especially to tend to wounded family and friends. You may also recall that I have been to the trauma bay twice in a calendar year - first with my brother who launched himself off his bicycle somehow and broke several bones and spent a month in the hospital and second with Carlton, my carpenter, who had a building he was taking down for me fall on him. He also had several broken bones, but "only" spent 2 weeks in the hospital.

So John, my little brother, the cabinetmaker is off on Friday. He is getting stuff ready so he can move into my basement while we build his house. My basement was his former shop so he has to move a bunch of wood and miscellaneous stuff to the real shop so he can stay in the basement. It's actually kind of a cool basement with a walkout door a large row of windows, a mini-kitchen, and a bathroom with a shower. It will be livable as a temporary space after the wood is moved. John was making some supports for the wood with the router when somehow the router grabbed the wood and pulled his fingers into the router bit. I think he must have reacted amazingly quickly because his fingers were mostly intact.

He had a tiny chip fracture of his left  ring finger and that was it for damage to the bone. The other miraculous thing is that the pads of his fingers are uninjured. That is critical for guitar player. Mostly he has what we call a nailbed injury. The area under the nails were crushed when it hit the router bit. One of the orthopedic residents who worked on Ben repaired the John's nailbed lacerations and wrapped him up. We'll see the hand surgeon in follow-up on Wed and we'll find out how long the recovery will be.

More x-rays. I intend for this to be the last time I post x-rays because no one else is going to get hurt.

You can see the tiny chip fracture on the ring finger on the lateral side.  

You can kind of see where the tissue on his 3rd and 4th fingers underneath the nails is kind of mangled.

So this is the current delay in the house progress. We haven't been able to demolish the trailer yet either. Soon though, very soon.