Wimberley! which way do we go?... DOWN!
The wife and I had concluded to get out of our Wimberley property. A realtor suggested building as cheaply as possible and we'd surely make a nice profit. The next step was to try and design a house using the existing pier/beam platform, and as many walls/floor that can be reused (sticking to the same measurments and specs the county has on record).
I spent a couple days with sketchup and a 3D floorplan program to see if I could make something work that did not require complete demolition and starting from scratch. The other hitch was, we have no well. So I needed to arrange the roof so that it catches enough rain to supply a two bedroom one bath home. Another complication with the existing home, there are no interior stairs going up to the second floor.
I shared my results with the wife, and received a less than enthusiastic reaction. When pressed, I got the old "if I can't say anything nice, I won't sy anything at all". She then set out to spend her time making her own plan. She did come up with a plan that had smaller rooms, and both bedrooms on the main floor. (she didn't share what her plan was for the 2nd floor)
I've learned that it's easier not to fight or go against the current in situations like this. The end result is usually a long drawn out conflict with a great deal of wasted time and emotion. So I agreed she can do whatever she wants with the house. I just want to be done with it.
since I'd already spent a couple days on these plans, I'll share them here since they are destined for nothingness anyhow.
I had the 2nd bedroom (to be used as a media room) on the second floor (spiral staircase in the bottom right of the floor plan above).
view from the entry towards the back.
view from the kichen to the living room.
View of kitchen and dining
THEN! I took all my Wimberley frustration and worked it out, literally. I worked a job monday through friday, construction. I earned an hourly wage painting, scraping and installing baseboards....
When the week had finished, I woke up Saturday morning and announced I wanted get to work on moving on with our lives. We ran down to wimberley and I set to tearing down the A-frame section of the house. We both agreed those four walls would need to be rebuilt (lots of interior space was wasted due to the walls that slope in).
I strapped a 9k lb tow strap through some windows and started to pull it down with the truck.
I may have said it before, a 7.3 liter powerstroke (turbo diesel) can pull a house clean off it's foundation. Proving that is not hyperbole, that is what we accomplished.
the end result is, none of the recent plans apply as the whole house was just sitting on rotted out pieces of wood. It's all junk. Check the video below to see the moment when the truck pulled the whole house OFF the pier-beam foundation.
