Home Demolition vs. Deconstruction

First off, can I start by saying every time I hear the word "demolition" I immediately think of the movie Demolition Man.  I don't know what that says about me, other than I like cheesy movies. 

Now that we got that out off the way, let's talk demo!  Many times, the highest and best use of a piece of land means that the existing home structure needs to be demolished.  It's too small, in need of too much repair or has issues that simply can not be remedied.  In this case, when it comes time to get rid of the home, what can you do?

photo from dreamstime.com

Burn it?  Sometimes the fire department will burn the home down as an exercise for their firefighters.  This often isn't possible though due to the closeness of the home to other structures. Or you simply don't want to pollute the air by setting the home of fire.  Understandable.

There's the classic demolition, meaning someone coming through with big equipment, destroying the house and dumping the remains at a landfill.  Sure, the landfill might recycle a lot of the debris (like Tualatin Valley Waste Recovery, who does a great job of recycling and recovering materials).  But still, it seems so sad to destroy a house and waste all of the materials that could be reused.

That brings us to deconstruction! Deconstructing a house means they take it apart carefully over days to be able to reuse the cabinets, doors, hardware, floors, fixtures, bricks, etc.  One place that you can buy and sell used construction items are at the Bone Yard NW.  The items that can't be reused are recycled.  This is truly a way to honor the past and give way to a bright new future.

Read more about deconstruction here.