And you think you've had a bad week this week......

Local contractor sent to demolish house, but it's the wrong one
by Laura Camper/Times-Georgian
06.10.09 -

Al Byrd received the shock of his life Monday when he checked his voice mail and listened to a message from his neighbor telling him his house was being torn down. Byrd called his neighbor just to confirm that he had heard correctly and listened in disbelief as his neighbor told him again that his house, at 11 Byrd Trail in Carrollton, had been demolished that afternoon.

“I said, ‘you got to be kidding me, I’ll come down there,’” said Byrd, a Carrollton native who now lives in Atlanta.

On the way, he contacted the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office and was accompanied to the house by Deputy T. Cook. By the time he and the deputy got there, his 2,200-square-foot house and a barn, valued at $200,000, had been reduced to debris and dumped into four huge Dumpsters. The backhoe and crane were still in the yard.

Some of the neighbors said the house had been demolished around 3 p.m. Monday, Byrd said.

No one was living in the house at the time of the demolition.

“My dad built this house with his own hands in 1950,” Byrd said. “Maple Street School burned down and he bought those bricks and they cleared off the old mortar and built this house for his 10 kids, he and my mom and his brothers.”

He was raised in the house. His older sisters were married there. It was the center of their family. His grandmother’s dining room set and china were in the house. So was the family Bible. [....]

(for more, go to the Times-Georgian Blog)