I am about two weeks behind in updating the blog, so the work depicted here happened September 9. I will be getting to the most recent work soon, so stay tuned to see if the house is still standing at all... We had done some initial planning before we commenced demolition, which I was going to discuss, but since now know things not known two weeks ago, let me just tell you that what we discovered during demolition changed everything about our plan and we had to go back to the drawing board. Therefore, I won't bother with the pre-construction planning up to this point. We knew that demolition was the first step in actually useful planning, because we had to be able to see what was inside the structure to know what needed to be done; as a result we decided to go big and get it done as quickly as possible. We hired extra help and had a 30 yard dumpster set on site to be able to remove as much demolition debris as possible in one day. We had one guy who was able to start Friday morning and he demolished most of the basement that day. Then three more men joined in bright and early Saturday morning and completed the demolition of all basement and main level finishes. In about 50 man-hours we gutted all the old plaster and drywall, insulation, carpeting, plumbing, electrical, and heating systems, so that the interior was down to the bare framing; filling up a 30 yard dumpster one and a half times before we were done. We didn't get as many pictures of this phase as we would have liked, and the picture quality is poor, probably due to the thick cloud of dust that hung in the air.
View from inside the former front bedroom looking into the bathroom. The furnace flue that was exposed inside a closet is now visible. You can also see how tiny the closet was, even without having an illegal and dangerous flue taking up a quarter of the limited space. At this point we have removed all the wall plastering and have now begun to kick down the ceilings from above. We crawled up in the attic and literally kicked and stomped down through the ceiling so we didn't have to pull the ceiling plastering and all that insulation down on top of us. If you have never had the chance to kick a ceiling down, you should. It is cathartic.
View looking from the front door through the hallway and into the kitchen and bath area. Our brother Justin, seen in the back on the right, is a demolition machine. He was very thorough and flat-out destroyed everything in his path. Thanks in large part to his efforts, we surpassed what we had hoped to accomplish in one day.
As you can see, we wore protective suits and dust masks to try to keep out the harmful effects of the nasty, filthy old fiberglass insulation and dust. I went through probably a dozen masks during the day because they would quickly clog up due to the huge amount of particles in the air. It got so bad we finally borrowed the neighbor's garden hose and sprayed everything down with water to knock the dust out of the air. By the time we got it emptied and cleaned up at around 8 pm, it looked much cleaner, but it still stinks, so we know we will have to do more. One of our critical goals is to remove all undesirable odors and make the home smell like a new home when done.
View from inside the former front bedroom looking into the bathroom. The furnace flue that was exposed inside a closet is now visible. You can also see how tiny the closet was, even without having an illegal and dangerous flue taking up a quarter of the limited space. At this point we have removed all the wall plastering and have now begun to kick down the ceilings from above. We crawled up in the attic and literally kicked and stomped down through the ceiling so we didn't have to pull the ceiling plastering and all that insulation down on top of us. If you have never had the chance to kick a ceiling down, you should. It is cathartic.
View looking from the front door through the hallway and into the kitchen and bath area. Our brother Justin, seen in the back on the right, is a demolition machine. He was very thorough and flat-out destroyed everything in his path. Thanks in large part to his efforts, we surpassed what we had hoped to accomplish in one day.
As you can see, we wore protective suits and dust masks to try to keep out the harmful effects of the nasty, filthy old fiberglass insulation and dust. I went through probably a dozen masks during the day because they would quickly clog up due to the huge amount of particles in the air. It got so bad we finally borrowed the neighbor's garden hose and sprayed everything down with water to knock the dust out of the air. By the time we got it emptied and cleaned up at around 8 pm, it looked much cleaner, but it still stinks, so we know we will have to do more. One of our critical goals is to remove all undesirable odors and make the home smell like a new home when done.
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