Note the beam in the pile on the right side of the photo below, the one with the perfect dark circle in the center. I have my termites to thank for that little Andy Goldsworthy-esque piece of work. Now too bad that was the beam that held up my house.

I felt I had made the right decision to take the house down, but the state I found the house in Wednesday night was a mess. Demo was completed, and all I had left standing were a few courses of dubious-looking block and a very pathetic but remarkably straight chimney. It looked like an old homestead ravaged by fire or hurricane.

Pieces of my house were stacked in hazardous piles: a few chunks of floorboard here, a termite-ridden section of joist there. Broken glass ground into the dirt. Discolored insulation puffed about the yard. Nails everywhere.

It was definitely the most stressful site visit I’ve had, as I took in the realization that I’d just destroyed my house and anticipated how to communicate my expectations about site neatness to my contractor. Thankfully there were piles of new building materials lying around, and I just tried to think about how it had to get better from here.