April 2006:
Our contractor informed us that it would cost about $375 per 21 foot bin to dispose of the house and that there would be an estimated 40-50 bins full. We were determined to send as little as possible to the landfill and embarked on a comprehensive listing of all items we thought might be useful to others. Basically, I went around with my Canon digital camera while my wife Charlene logged a description on the computer of the item including any pertinent details size dimensions or color etc. It was an exercise that took around 3 hours to do.
We posted a main advertisement on Craigslist.org “Teardown House / Remodel – Everything Must Go” with a line by line posting of each item. We placed the digital photos (resized nicely with an application called “PixResizer”) on a shared photo viewing Yahoo site and posted the link to the photos in the ad. We organized the photos into categories – kitchen, doors, windows, fixtures, appliances, etc. We also posted some prices we thought were reasonable based on looking at some comparables on eBay and Craigslist.
Amazingly, the response from the public was absolutely incredible. We had over 500 people e-mail us for items they were interested in. Responding to all the messages was somewhat time intensive but most of the time we would just give them my cell phone number and tell them to come to the house at designated times – e.g., all day Saturday or Sunday. The truly interested would call, which was a shorter list. We had over 50 people come by over three weekends and a couple of evenings and buy stuff or take some things away for free. The conditions were that they undo things themselves (under my supervision, I would help sometimes) and haul it away asap. We even drafted a Release of Liability / Waiver form based on a couple of templates I found free on the web (Google search “release liability waiver form”). We made sure power and gas were switched off and tried to stagger people’s work to avoid too many people to supervise.
Whatever we could not sell, we subsequently listed free and the freebies went very fast. Here is a sample of things we sold and others we gave for free:
Sold:
Windows
Outside and inside doors, screen doors
Light fixtures
White picket fence
Driveway automatic gate
Garage door and mounting hardware
Kitchen cabinets, appliances, sink, fixtures
Bathroom fixtures, cabinets, mirrors, tub, toilet, shower enclosures
Built in cabinets
Furnace, central air conditioning, condenser, ducting (relatively new)
Hardwood floor
Family Room Wooden Bar
Back yard fence
Fireplace mantle, grill, trim
Hot water tank
Washer & dryer
Free
Gazebo
Shed
Some doors
Lumber on kids playstructure
Blinds
Copper pipes
Copper pipes, aluminum window frames, electrical wire (for recycled metal)
Larger built in cabinets
Koi pond rocks
It’s interesting that some items would just not sell – take the bar fridge for example, which was this circa 1950s model with imitation wood metal siding and a long chrome retro handle. I tried selling it for $10 but no one wanted it. I finally listed it free and within 12 hours had 30 people wanting it! Many people monitor the free listings more than they do paid listing and some have set up RSS feeds to notify them of new postings. It reminded me of our last move when we listed our moving boxes for free and it took all of 3 minutes for someone to claim them and 15 minutes later they were already picked up and gone!
There is also a site called Freecycle which works well too but we were happy with Craigslist.
Click on this link for some photos of the post teardown sale view inside the old house.
