Phase 2: Demolition, Part one

With the house being empty, the fun work (according to the guys) of uninstalling and demolition began.

Kitchen Before (ish): 

Laundry Closet Before ish:

No more Kitchen....

No more closet...  the guys had finished the kitchen removal the day before. Dad (Opa Flokstra) went back the next and took out the closet walls and squared off the arch into the living room. 

It really opened up the area and view of the living room much more than I expected. 

This is a room in the building behind the house that we hope to turn into Jared's office. It was also full of furniture, cobwebs and piles of dead bugs :P Originally I had planned that this would be my warm up project for painting and refinishing while the house was being worked on, but Jared noticed a significant bow in the ceiling which upon further inspection revealed that there is not enough supports for the ceiling.

So with the guys still in demolition mode, down came ceiling number one.

And ceiling number two... which I believe had a layer or two of particle(ish) boards on top.

It also came with many other treasures that were stored in the "attic" space, some squirrel evidence and old nut stores (hence the coveralls and masks). 

There were times when we were in phase one of unloading the house where progress felt slow and the stuff didn't seem to end. But a few days of multiple hands on deck and bigger impact projects such as large furniture, carpet, kitchen and wall removal felt like huge wins that kept my heart up (even though this is work that kinda makes things worse before it gets better). 

Looking forward to rebuilding together! But until then stay tuned for Demolition, Part two. 

 

Phase 1: Empty the House

 We started our empty the house project in kitchen cupboards, which were thankfully mostly empty already and then moved to the upstairs "attic" storage that was accessible by a few doors in the upstairs rooms. I started with taking a box out at a time and bringing them to the shop, which got old pretty fast. So next time I unloaded this whole Christmas and seasonal decoration storage all at once and sorted through it in the room before bringing it downstairs.  This is a picture from when I unloaded all the boxes and was contemplating how I was going to get out of the storage area through the little door and over the mini mountain of stuff. 

It was actually a cute little attic space once we got all the boxes out of it. 

I did manage to clamor my way out and start sorting. Garbage went out one bedroom window onto the drive way (saved me some stairs runs), and donation items got bagged or boxed for when I had energy to do the stairs. We left PG just when it was starting to get the fall crispness in the air and arrived in Chilliwack to a very muggy and warm tail end of summer in September, so I found stair runs very draining and something that needed to be saved for mornings or cooler days. 

There were 5 attic accesses upstairs, thankfully I started with the biggest one, and two others were empty, and the last two were much smaller. One of them had some left over school supplies in them, these felt bears were really neat, they came with a set of 5 words, and you had to match what the bears were doing to the words. Hazel really enjoyed the activity. 

Next was getting all the little things and bedding down the stairs, at least it was easy enough to bag and toss, and then collect later. It was hard getting rid of so much stuff especially as a bunch of it is still usable, but we already had more then enough of our own bedding packed. So I was very pleased that I only ended up with one bag of items to keep (especially since saying "no" to free items is a weakness of mine). 

As I sorted and moved items out of the house the girls have been having a blast playing with items I'm sorting, or the left over toys or just exploring. I did "lose" Jade for a very short amount of time, quickly looked in all the rooms and was about to look upstairs, when I asked Hazel if she knew where Jade was " she's in the chimney" she prompt responded. 

Jared's old homeschool friend came over to check the place out, and got roped into helping move some of the larger furniture out of the house and into the shop. They got a good chuckle out of this island counter top that popped right off when they tried to move it. The quick visited turned into a impromptu BBQ and a neat time to connect with old friends, we even ended up visiting in the living room once it got dark, which just gave the emptying house a homey hopeful feel. 

Papa and Nana also came over for a work bee. We removed more of the bigger furniture, took down window coverings and took out the carpet in the living room, master bed room and one of the upstairs rooms.

Living Room

Front door, and Family room/playroom

Family room/playroom

Master bedroom

Thankfully it had normal carpet underlay and other flooring underneath the carpet.

Utility room

The plan is to move the washer and dryer into this room.

East upstairs room

Not sure what this is, possibility was once upon a time the rubber backing of the carpet... Papa worked on that project for us. 

A House to Make a Home

 It will be a big project, but we already learned with our PG house that the effort put in to make a house a home is really what counts. The house came with the majority of the big furniture left behind and the shop, shed and storage rooms full of items as well (which we knew going in). So there will be no shortage of sorting and purging for the next while! 

We are on 2 acres, some of which is hay field and some of which is gardens and grass. What I found really neat is when we measured it on google maps, the lived in space on this property and the lived in space on our PG property were very similar. 

Below are video walk throughs of downstairs and upstairs, some of the furniture was removed already by the time I remembered that a walk through video to compare to later would be neat. 

Moving Day

We did it. Packed up and moved out by 10:00am, September 10th, said our goodbye's and were pulling out with our convoy around 10:30. This place was really the first place we would call a home rather then just a house and it will always be very dear to us. We came as two and left as four, blessings abound!

Saying goodbye was hard, but a moment that I didn't want to regret missing later. Hazel and I walked around the house to say goodbye. "Goodbye house, Goodbye windows, Goodbye Curtains, Goodbye bedrooms" Hazels little voice carried a bit of an echo as we walked around. 

One last look and walk around the back yard while Jared buckled the girls in. 

Dad Flokstra's truck with the moving trailer, Jared's truck with the camping trailer, and our van made up our convoy. 

We made it safely to Chilliwack, our house to call and make a home in the background. It will be a process as we clean out and fix up the place before moving in. But so far we have settled well into the Flokstra's house as we tackle the house project together. Very thankful for all the help and support of family and friends through this big move and transition. 

 

Packing and Selling

Packing up and/or selling all our things over the past weeks was hard. It was something were I found I just needed to focus on the end goal and turn off the emotional switch or I would never have got any of it done. One of our biggest items that needed to be sold was the tractor, we debated for a while with the idea of keeping it. But with Jared needing a different truck for his Feed Rep job, we sold the tractor so he could purchase a truck that suited the job and family needs better. 

We got one dumpster for the last of the large wood items that were still left of the property.

Very handy having access to many boxes through Jared's work. Is there such thing as too many boxes? I'm pretty sure there was only 3-5 left over by the time we were done!

With the back deck still being very hot during late August and early September we found ourselves spending more and more time outside in the front of the house where it was more shaded. I would often find the girls sitting together on the front step playing together. 

Part of me worried about what the girls would play with as I kept packing up more toys... turns out they just play with what every I'm packing. Today I was working in the kitchen so extra lids and such got taken out to play and the extra garden carrots got incorporated too!

Hazel loved to help pack and label boxes when Jade was napping. She kept asking to help with the labeling so I finally did give in, and handed her the masking tap and a sharpie and she decided that she was going to do the other kitchen label. She asked were to start and then I walked away to go work on packing another box. A while later Hazel announced that she was done and needed help getting the tape off the roll and onto the box. I was very impressed when I saw what she copied, I could easily read the word kitchen with a backwards C!

We kept this up with a few other boxes, on this one we reviewed the letters after she wrote them, as at this point she is just copying and still learning all the letter names. We noted that she did all the letters in the right order but had one letter backwards and was missing the space between the words. 

and then on the next one she was able to put the space in! It was so neat to teach her along the way with just little tips of where to start and reviewing and rewarding later. We both really enjoyed it, and it was really special to be able to teach even though we were in the middle of a big move. 

One more precious picture on the girls sitting on the font steps, I think they were coloring this time. 😍

At this point the house was mostly packed into the trailer with the last minute stuff being left until the next morning. 

 

Being Sped on Our Way

 So much for the October/November plan... A few weeks into job searching and a job posting for a Feed Rep at Clearbrook Mills came up. After jumping through all the necessary hoops and interviews Jared had himself a job with the start date of September 15! 

This has proved to be once again a very providential job find. Jared is very excited to be heading back to the farming world with a job that involves interacting and helping farmers, constant learning and just about requires you to be working on a chicken farm on the side. 

The process of winding things down over here started. We sold/gave away the chickens. Found a new home for Nova. Debated over keeping Oreo, but rehomed him as well. We also managed to get the house 'for sale' sign up a week before we left and even got an accepted offer before enjoying our summer holiday! What a Blessing!

After a good year of feeling like we were "spinning our tires" with question like 'are we moving this year?', 'Are we just going to make this house work?',  'How much chicken farm building is worth doing on this property?' it felt amazing to be working as a team pulling in the same direction with a mutual goal. 

Subjects got removed a few days after coming home, and the real packing started as reality kicked in with the September 8th moving week being just around the corner.  

A Slowly Closing Chapter

Upon the start of the new year, we started talking about making a move, we had made our 1 year plan work for 4 years already! Jared was dreaming up ways to get into more Layer/Chicken farming, but the house on our property didn't match the longer term planning that was needed. 

So the house shopping started with only one really catching our eye. 40 acres with an older family sized farm house, some hay field, room to build barns and a nice looong drive way. The more we thought about it the more it became "the dream we moved up here for". So Dad Van Vliet helped us put one offer on it, which was originally declined and then lead to some house swap ideas, which lead us to make another offer that was still declined. During this time I was able to adjust to the idea of leaving our little house that we made into a home that we grew to love. I got to watch winter turn into spring knowing it was likely the last on this property, as well as enjoy so many little precious moments along the way. 

With nothing else on the market that was of much interest we decided to figure out how to get into raising more chickens with the property and buildings we had, there were definitely holes in the plan, but we were hopeful that we could filled them in as we came to them. 

Earlier in the year around the same time we were working on putting offers on the 40 acres Mom and Dad Flokstra where working on purchasing the property next to them, it was of some interest to us, especially Jared, but we really wanted to try making an offer on the 40 Acre in Prince George first. Weeks and months passed, the 40 Acres place didn't work out, the Flokstras got possession of the place next door, and Dad Flokstra started talking about looking for some more help on the broiler farm and before we knew it we were very seriously considering moving back to Chilliwack and the farming opportunities it provided. This proved to be a time of spiritual growth and trust for me. As we considered this opportunity through prayer, I experienced a warming to this idea that I didn't expect.  After a last minute trip to the Fraser Valley to take a look at the house, property and job opportunities it was decided. We were moving back, we didn't know when yet, but the big picture plan was made, and it felt so good to have a long term plan that we could see working, especially after about a year of trying make/find a plan that fit our long term goals and our family.

Now we have a better idea of dates and hope to be making the big move before November, ideally sometime in October, but we will have to see what God has planned for us during this time of transition.  Prayers at this time would be appreciated as we work towards selling our family home, saying "see you later" to our community and dear friends in Prince George, and transition our family to new home and community, while being happily welcomed back by our families.