Sinks, landscaping, and more bricks

We got lucky and had another day to haul off bricks from the Anderson house. In our first load the other day we got 349 bricks. On our second load the night before last we got 396.

This is the first load of bricks

This is the second load

Along with the bricks we got a few stair treads (we have 2 broken ones on our stairs), the downstairs newel post, 3 window weights, and some random trim. They started loading everything up and hauling it away yesterday. We didn't have time to go back last night because we were busy planting the trees we got on our trip to Alabama over the weekend. Hopefully the crew wont work today because of the holiday and I'll be able to get some more bricks this afternoon.

As I mentioned we went to Alabama over the weekend and picked up a lot of trees. We got dogwoods (pink, white, and red), flowering crabapples (pink and white), and Crape Myrtles(white, pink, purple, and red). Some of them we picked up at a fleamarket for very good prices( the dogwoods are 6' and we got them for $8 each, the Crape Myrtles are 4' and they were $3 each), the rest we got from my girlfriends grandparents farm. We went out in the woods and found a lot of white dogwoods and pink and white crabapples. These needed to be planted ASAP since their roots were just sitting in water. we also got a lot of flowering bushes but those wont be planted until after this cold front passes.

These are the 2 dogwoods we planted in the front yard. The back right one is a white, the front left one is a pink.



Another reason for going to Alabama was to go to a place called Dixie Salvage. They carry builders overstock. I bought a wall cabinet for the kitchen (42"x30" oak face, solid plywood sides for $80). We also found 3 sinks there for our bathroom vanities, 2 for the double vanity in the master bathroom, and the 3rd for the main downstairs bathroom. The sinks are handpainted in Mexico. I wasn't sure about the design of them first but now I kind of like them.


The faucet is one we got from vintage tub, the handles have small extensions to raise them up by about 2" but I didn't have them installed for the picture. Everything is test fitted into place, I still have to refinish the vanity before I can permanently install everything.

We also found a faucet for our kitchen sink, it's brushed copper made by Kingston Brass, it was $50!


Hopefully when I get home this afternoon I can make another trip to the Anderson House for more bricks, if there's anything left that is.

Final update on the Anderson House

See the posts here and here for the first 2 parts of this story.

I was out of town for the weekend. I came back yesterday to find that the demolition of the Anderson House had begun. They were removing the windows and other asbestos containing materials from the house. The windows were wrapped in heavy gray plastic and thrown unceremoniously into a dumpster on the site. Most of the glass shattered from them being thrown. Even so, I had to restrain myself from raiding the dumpster last night. Everyone knows how badly I wanted the windows, the asbestos cops would have been at my house in no time.


I went by there today to see about getting some other things from the house, turns out they were about to start the actual demolition of the house right when I arrived.

It took just over 2 minutes to tear all the additions down.

Then he started in on the main part of the house:




All in all the entire demolition took about 15 minutes... the house stood for 101 years.

I went back this evening to salvage some bricks. I found 3 columns that were salvageable and a door. It's the white one pictured above with half the house torn down. It has an Eastlake rosette and keyhole cover.




That's close to 400 bricks in the picture above. There are still thousands left but unfortunately it got dark on me. Most everything will be gone by the time I get off work today. What really sucks is that this whole time, for the last 4 months, I could have been salvaging all of the other things in the house.I just didn't realize, I thought I had to have something concrete, in writing. Now I see that as long as it wasn't asbestos, it didn't matter.

I learned a pretty hard lesson today, in situations like this it's better to just take then try and ask for something. Every single person I talked to in my long fight for the windows didn't care if I took them, they just didn't want to be responsible. So they passed the buck on to someone else. I spoke with everyone from bank presidents to attorneys, architects to contractors. Everyone passed the buck. If I would have just taken them months ago no one would have missed them, no one would have cared. Now another piece of history is gone.