It’s amazing how a house that’s stood for decade can be gone in just a few hours.
The white house with the green shutters at 180 Huntmar was standing when I drove by it on Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning at 9:00am, all that was left was a foundation and some wooden beams. By dinner time tonight, the foundation was all that was left.
The property is being developed as a private school and medical facility. It was one of the last rural homes left in this part of Kanata and Stittsville.
I don’t know much about this house. A former neighbour says that it was built in the 1970s, and it replaced a Victorian-era frame farmhouse that once stood on the site. Do any readers know more about its history? I would like to hear from you at feedback@stittsvillecentral.ca
When I was researching the story of Boyd House across the street, one of the Boyd family descendants asked me if this house was still standing. She had fond memories of the family across the road.
She asked me to send a picture, and that’s when I snapped these ones, from December 4, 2013. I regret not taking some photos last week, when I saw a construction team preparing the home for demolition.
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UPDATE: Maria Segreto, an account manager for Scava Construction, sent along these photos showing how the house was taken down.
“Every house is studied very carefully… The structure and condition of the house gives us an angle where to start and then we simply put the house in the basement,” says Segreto. “We chop all the material, we group them together and place them into bins to later be hauled to the appropriate disposal facilities. Same is done with the concrete from the foundation. The demolition itself takes about 1-2hrs, the cleaning process 1 to 2 days.”
“For some homeowners and even their neighbours it’s a very emotional process, so as fast as we are we also like to respect what that house meant to some people and very often we save a piece of the house as memory of what it was.”
In the case of 180 Huntmar, previous owners were able to save a piece of stained glass window that had some sentimental value. We’ll have more about that story soon…
I too regret not taking more pics that evening, I thought I’d have time in the morning! They worked fast.