Yet More Demolition

Hey, I TOLD you it was going to be an all-demolition blog from now on.

Noel texted me midday with this photo. Basically, the guys showed up this morning and took the laundry room and bathroom bit off the house.

A couple things about this: note the hidden outline of an old peaked porch roof there on the long beam going over the old back wall of the house. A very different kind of porch!

When I was working through the design with the engineers, they asked me about framing in that part of the house, and we agreed that it was inadequate (the framing was something like 24" on center and very undersized even for a one-story building), and since the two rooms were obviously an addition done later it was decided that the structure would come down and be replaced with adequate framing.

And by the time the guys had gone home it was looking pretty good. Notice they put up a guard rail to prevent anybody from walking into the basement accidentally.

This is what the back of the house looks like now from the door of the old pantry. The piles of debris in the kitchen and pantry seem to grow and shrink quite a bit.

Here's how it looks in the (old) kitchen now, facing the (old) dining room. So much light!

(In other news it is definitely time to redo the room categories in this blog setup.)

And check out the (old) dining room, future kitchen! One neat thing you can see here is the framing for the bay roof above. The contractor is keeping that because a little roof will remain, much like the little curved roofs on our older bays.

Here's looking down into the yard from the second floor. The shoveling took up most of the terrible vinyl floor tiles by the end of the day (they also tend to curl up in the heat, and there was plenty of heat). You can see a pile of old wood debris back there, and a couple of the windows from the old bathroom and laundry room.

The contractors definitely used their newfound extra room to spread out demolition debris. They also moved the motley collection of pots I'd kind of stacked by the deck out of the way.

And the debris pile in the back. This is all wood. You'll see in the video that they took the porch addition apart by sawzall-ing the walls into panels and just lifting them up, which is effective and impressive as hell. Then they hauled them away and pulled them apart, making piles like this.

And a bigger shot of the back. We laid all the panels from the shed out on the grass because I have this theory that I can kill a lawn (all evidence tells me that every lawn I have ever tried to kill has come back with a vengeance, but I keep trying).

The only success I have ever had with vegetation removal is with chickens. And in only a short time since they went to visit the neighbors (not a euphemism; the neighbors asked if they would come visit so I moved them around the corner), all hell has broken loose in the chicken yard. I think we also have tomatoes and potatoes growing in there. Madness.

Oh, hey, I promised you a video! Look for the occasional small cloud of dust as they take down a plaster wall:

(If your browser is having trouble, try downloading the video directly.)

posted by ayse on 06/06/16