Temp Power Pole

Demo has been delayed while the temporary power pole gets installed and inspected. This has taken a lot longer than anticipated. Here's a shot of the house with the pole in and "ready". Demo will likely happen later next week.

The temp power pole. This thing has been inspected, adjusted and "fixed" about 7 times already.

Here's the house with the pole installed. Poor house. Poor neighbors!

Prepping for Demo 2

After getting moved out, we had a lot of work to do to prep for the demo. First, the rock wall in the front had to be removed. Next, the asbestos siding had to come off, and last, we needed to strip parts of the interior we wanted to save.

A huge *thank you* to the Bernstein, Kneier, Bassage-Glock, Larpenteur and Stamschror families, as well as my parents, for making this phase a reality.

Here's the house before all the serious prep started.

First the rock wall had to come down. Mr. Tim brought his huge impact tool to help, and the boys loved it.

All the stone removed from the wall was carried by hand to the back yard. We hope to use it in the new wall.

I love how photos make a big job seem instantly done. In reality, taking out the stone wall was brutal and took a few days.

Next, materials from the interior were salvaged. Here, Mr. Michael "supervises" Mr. Tim taking out Uncle Dennis' beautiful wood panels. Safety fourth!

We had really hoped to save these original painted tiles over the fireplace to use in the new house. But they were set deep into the mantel. So, Mr. Tim once again brought over an impact tool and made short work of it. Michele was very pleased!

 

This shot is of Mr. Casey taking a load of rocks to the back yard, but gives you a good view of the house with and without the asbestos siding.

Prep done! Here's the house with the siding stripped, the rock wall removed, and the interior ready for demo. Thank you to everyone who helped!

And just for comparison again, here's what the house looked like when we started.

Prepping for Demo

To get ready for the demo,we started the long process of packing up 12 years worth of stuff. Once out, we had to prep the house for Demo Day. That meant removing asbestos, testing for rats and digging infiltration test holes, to name a few things.

To send the house off in style, we had a fantastic family party to commemorate all the wonderful memories. The highlight was definitely Grandma taking the first ceremonial "demo swing" to kick things off.

Packing got a little...chaotic. We realized we had been putting it off far too long and things turned into a mad scramble in May and June.

Not wanting to waste a dime, we packed our PODs pretty tight.

We got pretty good at packing. We made the whole house fit in essentially 4 PODs.

Many evenings Michele and I put the kids to bed and kept packing late into the night. Here's a shot of us on pure adrenaline at 2am.

The kids would wake up in the morning, and like magic, the PODs were packed!

 

With all our stuff out, suddenly, the house had plenty of space - especially for indoor soccer!

Once we were done packing we had the Hanzeli family party. It was fantastic to be together and relive some hilarious stories from over the years at Sunnyside. We all enjoyed taking a wack at the walls to help start the demo.

Grandma was reserved the honor of taking the first ceremonial demo swing. She nailed it.

After Grandma, we took our turn at the wall. Ya. It was pretty fun!

Even little Peter helped out with demo prep.

Why not put all the kids on the mantel for a photo?

Wonderful home. Wonderful memories. Wonderful family.

Sunnyside v2.0

After many decades of housing friends and family, the next edition of the Sunnyside House is about to be built. We feel very honored to carry on the family tradition of being stewards of this house, and are excited to share the next chapter of it's adventure with everyone.

It's also a wonderful time to remember all the great memories of the current (old) Sunnyside House and celebrate the building of the new Sunnyside House - Sunnyside v2.0!

After a long absence, we'll be using our blog to post pictures of the construction over the next 9-10 months, as well as some fun trips down memory lane. Enjoy!

The day Grandma Eva sold us her Sunnyside House (December 2014). Can you see Baby Peter? Thank you Grandma!

 

Grandpa Victor and Grandma Eva bought the Sunnyside house in ~1957 shortly after moving to Seattle. It's been a beloved home to many family members ever since. Note: this photo is likely from the 1970s or 80s. There's a photo out there of what it looked liked originally in the 1950s, and we're trying to track it down. But this is pretty close.

UPDATE! Found some old photos of the house. There's an even older one I'm still looking for.

Here you can see the stone wall clearly and the covered porch that existed before the remodel in the 1980s.

I just love the old cars in the shot. And you can see the original style of the garage doors on the house.

Who doesn't like a white Christmas?