Wades Beach: Out of the Ashes

On the ferry from New London to Orient Point, hauling back items for the new house, June 2009.

This summer was kind of drag so there were not any real updates to the blog about the new house rebuilding. Chrissie and I went east about once a month for various reasons, and stayed in our neighbor’s house. A weekend in June was the biggest day of the whole process, which I was too wiped out to really recount at the time. But now that the demolition has taken place, the real work can begin.

June 13-14 we had the madness of a two-state trek. The story started on Friday night, when we drove from New York to Holbrook, Long Island. We stayed the night at my godparents’ house, which is 50 miles from the Upper West Side and 30 miles to Riverhead. In the morning, Saturday, we drove to Riverhead and picked up a 28-foot truck at U-Haul. Chrissie followed me in the car as I drove the truck on the North Fork to Orient Point. She parked the car and we drove the truck onto the ferry.

We took the ferry across the Long Island Sound to New London, Connecticut. It was kind of nice to ride in the sunshine, but I knew we were facing a bitch of a day ahead. So we had a lot on our minds as the 90-minute ride took off. We got to New London and then the craziness started. We picked up three workmen who work for Irreplaceable Artifacts, part of Evan Blum’s Demolition Depot empire. The foreman rode up front with us, as we had the two other guys bounce around in the back. I know. Stupid. About 40 minutes later, we got to our destination in Middletown, CT.

At the store, we had to get busy. We had purchased many items from Evan and now we had to collect them and get them back to Long Island. In the basement was the “door vault” which is 10 times bigger than the one in Harlem. We were buying interior doors for the house, about 20. All are oak and came from an apartment house on the Upper West Side (probably near us). We were choosing bedroom, bathroom and closet doors. Almost all have the original brass hardware and glass doorknobs. The bathroom doors have etched glass in them. We sorted out the doors we wanted, and the workers hauled them up to the truck.

On this trip we also picked up a fireplace mantle. It is really nice, and came out of the demolished Bowling Mansion in Greenwich, CT. This took almost the whole day, but we were not done yet. We got in the truck, loaded up our guys in the back, and headed back to New London. Evan has another warehouse there, and we had more to pick up! First we loaded up a really nice bookcase, which came out of a house in Queens. It will take up about 10 feet of wall space once it is assembled. That fit in the truck. However, we could not fit in our major purchase of the weekend: an entire kitchen.

From the same house where the fireplace came from, we got an entire 1940s kitchen, the cabinets and the stainless steel counters. It was a damn bargain. When I opened up the cabinet drawers, the tableware and serving utensils were still in there. When we got to the warehouse in New London, we figured out the truck was too small to fit the kitchen cabinets and the stainless steel countertops and sink, which is massive and is all one piece. We also bought two round windows, which will fit into the eaves, but we left them there.

We drove to the ferry with the spoils, and hopped on. The truck rode on the back as we retreated to the bar onboard. Almost two hours later, we drove onwards. Our plans changed because originally we were going to take all of this stuff to Shelter Island, and put it into our pod. But we knew: (a) this would not fit, and (b) two ferry round trips in one day would be insane. So we drove the truck to Southold, to a storage facility. They were closed.

We parked the truck in their lot for the night, and drove the car back to Holbrook, where we stayed a second night. It was exhausting. The following morning, Sunday, we drove back from Holbrook to Southold, which is over an hour away. We rented a 10x30 room and threw all the doors and bookcases inside. Locked up and drove home.

But it’s not over yet!

A month later, we went back to Southold and met a moving company. These guys brought over the kitchen counters, cabinets, and some other junk. We met them at the storage place as they offloaded.

So to review: we have a storage facility in Southold that has portions of the new house. We have junk in storage in our basement on West 99th Street. We have 15 boxes in our apartment. But don’t forget the pod on the front lawn of the old house.

Now you see why I didn’t blog about this last summer: it was too painful.


Aboard the ferry to New London from Orient Point.


The warehouse in New London, where the kitchen was stored.


The kitchen cabinets in the warehouse.


Chrissie inspects the new counters, Southold, July 2009.


Our storage space, full of doors and an entire kitchen.

Labels: Plans, Possessions

Wow, I can't believe there has not been an update since April. But there really has not been much to say. Since the house burned down in January 2008, and has been a shell since then, we have had many ups and downs. But once the fight with the insurance company was solved, we then had to work on the other financial details. Now everything is in place.

Today we got a message from Tor, our contractor: "The house is removed to the foundation and debris taken away." So I guess that means anyone driving by will not see the ugly site of the damage. That is the best news we could have gotten.

The next update will hopefully come from Shelter Island. We are going there in early October to see the hole in the ground where the house was. The bad memories of the fire are still with us.

Labels: Construction