When webought our landin 2019 , there was a 1974 mobile home onsite that was livable . ( And in fact , we did hold up in that homefor over two year before we smash ground . )
It was a single - wide manufactured sign with a stick - built add-on , which made it unsafe to move ( so we could n’t donate the structure ) . There was groovy ’ 70s faux wood paneling on the interior , peeling wallpaper , and flimsy ceiling tile — all of which get several coats of frosty blank paint when we moved in . ( It ’s amazing how snowy key can make anything front well . )
This is how it looked when we first saw the Zillow listing …
Of course , we did n’t buy the holding for the nomadic plate . We bought it for the land . So the home had to be deplumate down to make manner for a new house , and in August 2022 , we go out ( and into a letting ) to take off the process .
First step: demo permits
To tear down the structure , we needed two freestanding demonstration permits : one from the Deschutes County Building Department , and one from the Assessor ’s Office .
The permit from the Assessor ’s Office was more of a post - demolition app that had to be bow with depiction of the fluid home before , during , and after demonstration , as well as any receipt related to the demo ( in our case , a reception from the excavator ) .
The program program formally removed the old house from the assessment that they have each year , which will lower our property taxes while the new house is being built .
Where we live in Central Oregon , property revenue enhancement are assessed based on how much of the home has been construct . So if the house is only 75 percent sodding by the fourth dimension taxes are due , we give a low revenue enhancement based on the current ( unfinished ) note value .
Asbestos abatement
Because of its age , we had to have the mobile home plate tested for asbestos - comprise fabric . A small-scale amount was regain under two layers of flooring in the kitchen , dining elbow room , and lavatory ( a coarse affair with floor backing from the 1970s ) .
The asbestos was n’t an issuewhilewe were living there since it was undisturbed , but destruction could n’t happen until all of the asbestos was removed and the air quality tested for safety .
We could n’t be onsite during the asbestos abatement for obvious reasons , but were able to see the property a couple days after . The abatement crew had to pull out all the vinyl sheet floor , as well as the kitchen cabinets , lavatory cabinets , bathtub , and part of the walls — anywhere that particular type of floor backing was found .
It was a petty creepy-crawly to see the house gutted like this , but we were so excited to at long last get rid of it !
Pre-demolition
Once the asbestos was bump off , we disconnected all utilities and installed a impermanent might celestial pole . Our excavator moved in and part pulling art object off the home , bit by bit , to see where the existing water and power line of reasoning were .
This change state out to be pretty tricky because very few records existed of our property , and a lot of work had been done over decades without permits . We knew there would be mess of surprise along the way ( and a few busted pipes ) , but the top to all that ?
Building new signify we could part fresh , put in raise pipe , and do it exactly where all of our lines were buried .
Our visual sense for D - Day went something like this : We ’d hand the kids their own posterior of spraying paint , cut sledgehammer into the wall and rip out whatever was leave inside the theatre — you sleep together , all the sport stuff and nonsense you always see on TV .
The realness ?
My married man and his champion pass to the family a mates weeks before demo to salvage the double - pane window and methamphetamine hydrochloride sliding room access ( for a future nursery ) as well as the woodstove and pine plank floor ( for a succeeding unnamed projection ) . They also dispatch all the appliances , light fixtures , switching plate covers , room access knobs , and other functional materials to donate to our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore .
The house was ace moth-eaten and jolly much ruin at this point ( and it was 30 ° Finsidethe house ) , so we took our annual Christmas posting family portrait , rent the child play in the Baron Snow of Leicester a piffling , then hunkered down in our warm RV with mimosas to view the excavators work .
I can say that it was still deeply satisfying to observe the house get crush , even if we , ourselves , did n’t break a beading of sudor doing it !
And yes , the excavator ( who happened to be our neighbour ) let us sin off a bit before he have to operate !
Demo day
On demonstration day , it snowed 6 inches overnight … in early November . We were in the middle of a freak blizzard but surprisingly , there was a bantam windowpane of open weather that aurora , so the crew was able to hammer in the lead as planned .
The excavators bellow to life and startle peeling away the siding , making the house resemble somewhat of a Body Worlds showing .
It was wild to watch these machines chomp and claw the planetary house apart and scoop all the pieces into piles : all the metallic element scraps in one pile , concrete in another . Vinyl , wood , wiring , and other tripe in the dump hand truck .
segment by section , the mansion went down as walls were folded in , smashed up , then displume back out . The Kyd were thrilled to watch it all go down !
Then , they brought in the big wasteyard hand truck I ’d ever seen to bump off junk from our place . The dump hand truck was the same length as the house !
We also had a very sure-enough septic system ( so old that county records did n’t even love where it was locate on the property ) so the metal septic tank had to be pump , crushed , and buried as part of the demo . ( We will have a brand - young septic tank and leach field install . )
After the house remnant were hauled off to the landfill , the excavators pick up and grade the property .
We ’d left in the middle of demo , so when we returned a few days afterwards to visit the deal , it felt surreal … like there had never been a household there ! ( It was also weird to be able-bodied to see flat down the middle of our lot with no obstruction . )
Property survey
Once we had a blank slate for edifice , the surveyor came out to locate the pins on our dimension , mark the house corners , and make trusted the structure was sited correctly . ( A survey had been done a very long time ago when the original parcel was subdivide , so we require to be absolutely sure any future fencing wo n’t block on the neighbour . )
The surveyor pound stake into the ground for each corner of the house , and we in the end had a visual of where the service department , porch , livelihood room , and other areas were in intercourse to our drive and views !
All of this happened between former November and early December with irregular weather . We got almost a foot of snow , keep an eye on by big rain that wash it all away , followed by more snow , follow by a straightaway spell of warmish temporary worker , follow by coke flurries … and it continued like this through the vacation .
Fortunately , the new class brought a week of mild winter weather , which pose us up for the large slam and our official groundbreaking !
