“We immediately turned to follow the ["Salvage Sale"] sign, only to be confronted with this beautiful home in a historic neighborhood. Strangely, the home was being gutted right before our eyes.”
One of my favorite hobbies is fixing up my house. Hubby and I did that a lot when we lived in Atlanta, but not so much in German because we were renting. Now that we're back in our own home, the building bug has bitten us once again, and we couldn't be more excited about it. This weekend, we were driving around Palo Alto, and noticed a sign that said "Salvage Sale". We immediately turned to follow the sign, only to be confronted with this beautiful home in a historic neighborhood. Strangely, the home was being gutted right before our eyes. We approached, greeted by a worker from a local salvage company, who explained that we entered at our own risk, but anything we saw was for sale. Anything.
We toured the 100+ year old home with inlaid hardwood flooring, arched doorways with custom redwood trim, built-in shelving units, antique ceiling fixtures, authentic windows with wavy glass... all you could possibly want in a beautiful historic home. But the tragic thing was, it was being torn down. Well, first torn apart, then torn down. What a shame. Heartbroken, I searched for a reason for all of this. I asked the salvage worker what the story was, and she didn't know, but said that the others who had toured the site were ready to lynch the owners for doing such a...crime? I thought surely it would be a crime, because almost every town has historic zoning commissions. I asked about that, and the worker said that Palo Alto used to have some pretty strict ones, but they got sued a year or so ago, and dropped all historic building codes. All of them. What a shame.