Emptying 509

While we had been working on the finances, the plans and all of the headaches in between, we had also been working really hard behind the scenes.

I mean, we had this building, which we knew was going to be needed empty for the handover for construction and we had a heck of a lot to do as said building, contained so much stuff.

More than a normal person could imagine, as everything in it had been carefully collected over 40 odd years of John and Dwayne being in business. Going way back to the Service Station and mechanics business they owned in Karori, through to the purchase of the tow business (which was a lock stock and barrel kind of deal where they took on all the previous owners "stuff") and the subsequent move of said tow business into the current building.

There were all kinds of amazing things going on in there. A virtual treasure trove.

Car parts, truck parts, more tools than I ever hope to see again in my lifetime, an extraordinary collection of 'useful' items, like steel, wood and various wondrous miscellaneous things that Dwayne so creatively termed "important" and "necessary" but in actual fact when it came down to it we really couldn't keep storing.

You see, it's one thing when you have all this space and you can find a corner or a niche, or build another shelf to store things. But when someone takes away half of your space, and you suddenly have to figure out how to tetris a lifetime's worth of things into half as much space as you had, things get tricky.

Lucky for us, we had 3 years in which to prepare for the final move.

So over the three years while we got through miles and miles of red tape and paperwork and endless lists of things to do, alongside that we began the arduous task of what I term as the great divide.

The great divide was a war of wills and energy sometimes.

Me on one side asking do we REALLY need this?

He on the other nodding emphatically and telling me it was crucial.

Our staff in the middle laughing their asses off, while shaking their collective heads in great amusement at Dwayne's utter stubbornness and his flat refusal to negotiate on things to throw out/recycle/sell and things to keep.

We matched wits many times with me coming up with ever increasingly creative ways to convince him we didn't need the thing, and him hitting back with even better reasons to keep the thing.

I would order a skip, and I could fill it in a day. Where it would take him weeks to decide what he would part with.

And we did a lot of freecycling. We setup a sign on the corner of our building with a huge FREE sign. And we would put things Dwayne thought were useful to someone out there. Originally, I said to him anything not taken in a couple of days we would pop in the skip. But incredibly, it was very rare for any item to last more than a day. Sometimes things were gone by the time I'd managed to put it outside, walk back inside and come back out with the next thing!

It often amazed me at the things people would come along and take. Anything from old appliances, to clothing. Shelves, random office furniture, chairs, pieces of steel and excess tools. building fittings and car parts, windows and doors, even a set of stairs!

It made me happy that these things were being used, and no longer stored by us for another few decades!

We did a lot of building of storage shelves, and working out how to make better use of the limited space we would be facing.

We invested in better tools and more useful work and space options to help us fit a lot more into our half pint area. Which in later time has been an absolute godsend.

Even things like installing a couple of hoists have been space savers, and useful for working on cars here.

I lost count of how many hours we spent moving things from one building to another. I really did. Many days it was all day. Others it was on and off as work allowed. We removed so many skips of actual rubbish.

Things got pretty ruthless, especially towards the end of the emptying phase.

Months and months were spent stripping everything out of the building and re-creating our work spaces in the other building.

We had to move the entire tyre bay and tyre storage, the tool room, build a new office and move the existing one. It was mind blowing how much work was involved.

And once we had gotten to the point where we were finalising the finance and it started really sinking in that they needed the building sooner rather than later, we started the big task of getting the inside building structures out.

We started with getting the upstairs empty and ripping out all of the amenities. Toilet, bathroom, kitchenette, walls, ceilings, fittings.... and even the floor which turned out to be all solid rimu.

That was a hilarious removal, as we had decided to use a space outside the building to stack all the wood so that it was in one place to make disposal and loading it up easier.

We had no idea people would want it. So we started carrying the wood outside and stacking it, and by the time we got the pile about a metre high, I went back in and suggested a plan b as it was getting too high for me to reach.

We went out to assess the situation after some discussion, and the pile was gone. Literally gone. Every single piece.

So we had a bit of a laugh, and started stacking again.

This time, it again got about a metre high, but this time a lovely gentleman pulled up and began loading wood into his car, so I asked him if he wanted it, and he had assumed it was free (because of the sign) so I laughed and told him to go for gold. He admitted that this was his third load, so I said to him, that we still had heaps to go!

He filled his car and off he went, we kept hauling loads of wood out and by the time we got the stack about 2m high there were three cars and three people pretty much battling it out for wood.

It was hilarious watching them out the window. There was a man with crutches, who was frantically stacking wood by his car, and guarding his pile, while another couple of fellows were loading as much as they could as fast as they could...

I was laughing so hard at one point I had to stop carrying wood because I felt so bad for laughing at them but I couldn't help it!

Who even knew that a pile of wood could about start world war four????

It wasn't just the rimu either, because as we started getting into the framing of the old inner walls, that went as fast as all the rest.

These locals were not fussy! Anything that went out, vanished!

We managed to strip out the entire inside of the building, which was a massive upstairs room, with multiple walls, a bathroom, toilet, kitchenette and an attic space, then a downstairs toolroom, staff room, locker room, bathroom with shower, three toilet rooms, a kitchen and an office with entrance way.... and the only tip run we did was a single ute load of the very last tiny scraps of wood no one wanted.

People took the toilets, sinks, kitchen sinks, taps.... even the old carpets!

The last three weeks before the final emptying of the building was a huge few weeks for us as we had the last bits of the inside building to dismantle, and the last things to move. Which when I looked around, it just didn't seem like a lot left. But we worked every single day for three weeks, moving things all day. And we pulled two weeks of nights moving things, we worked till 1am in the morning every day, carrying things from one building to the other and finding them homes. My Mum and Step-Dad came every night after working full days and worked with us till midnight moving things and we were so incredibly grateful. I'm eternally grateful to good friends who came and mucked in. To acquaintances who came and collected things, who delivered things to even more people who responded to social media advertising of things that I thought were too good to throw out but desperately needed to be gone.

Every night we fell into bed, utterly exhausted. Every muscle we had ached and even our bones were tired. Mentally we were under so much stress trying to keep the businesses running smoothly, while being so tied up with the build stuff that it was an immense juggle adding parenting in the mix when we had two small boys who also needed attention.

We are so absolutely blessed to have so many people around us who stepped up to help with school runs, making and delivering meals when we couldn't cook, people dropping off groceries and supplies, others helping with making lunches for the little ones and even the school community who were amazing with the number of after school playdates where they even fed our little ones before dropping them home.

This area is so special in so many ways. From the many faces who recycled items which would have otherwise seen landfill, to those who offered tangible help. so many in this community had a part is helping us get to where we are today and we are grateful for each and every single one.

I do wish that we had more photos from before we began the demolition work, but looking back over my photo albums there really aren't many.

We started in on the work with so little notice, and got stuck in so hard and fast that by the time I thought oh I should take photos, we'd already changed so much.

Here are a handful of images of various stages of the demo work we did though.

So much work, and so worth the energy!