Demo Days 3 & 4

Demo Days 3 & 4
06/09/07
06/10/07

On Demo Day 3, My good friend came down and helped me at the house. My father helped out that day, too. I don't have any pictures on the work done that day, but I have pictures of the results. We mainly tackled the framing around the fireplace and closets in Apartment B's front room and bedroom. It was tough work. My house was built well and the lumber used was extremely bulky and heavy.


Here you see the pile of lumber taken down from fireplace wall and closets. It's piled on the floor in Apartment B's front room, since it may be re-usable for my renovation. Keep in mind this wasn't a load-bearing wall. That's a lot of lumber. (My contractor ok'd the demo of this wall, by the way. I'm not just tearing down walls all willy-nilly.)

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Demo Day 4

Here you see the wall gone and scaffolding set up where the closets were. Amazing how open the room already looks, isn't it?


Head on view of the remaining fireplace, from Apartment B's front room looking towards the back of the house.


View of the other side of the fireplace from the bedroom looking to the front of the house.


Another angle, same shot. I liked how the way this view looks, with the scaffolding and ladder and bare fireplace. Like I'm a bona fide renovator or something...


Those closets took up a lot of space. Look how perfectly the scaffolding seems to fit in their place.


Looking up the chimney where it goes into the ceiling. I braved the scaffolding and climbed up to the attic to begin the demo. It was extremely hot up there, even though I took a box fan up with me. Remember that the chimney had been taken down below the roof line by a previous owner, so I just had to take it down from there.


And after a while, I even got it below ceiling height. I took this after coming down from the attic and sitting in front of the fan for a while. It came down easier that I thought it would, but it wasn't exactly child's play. It was hard work.


More shots of the other side of the chimney after I'd been working on it a while. I tagged my father to take over while I recouped. Friend had to go home, so it was just me and Daddy on Demo Day 4.


And it's gone. Well, knocked down. I let my dad wail on it a while, and then joined him. It was quick work with both of us tackling it. I had to take this picture, and the next few as well, with the flash off because it was so dusty and sooty in the house.


That's a big pile of bricks. Actually, we had to stop tearing it down because the bricks at this point were piled higher than what is left of the fireplace.


A big pile, close up and blurry. This picture makes me feel like I accomplished something.


And here we see the empty whole in the ceiling where the chimney was. I hadn't turned my flash back on yet, that's why it's blurry.


Daddy standing outside the house. Since we could no longer tear it down, we decided to move the brick. He went outside, and I piled them up just under the window. He reached in, grabbed a few, cleaned the ones I missed, and stacked them up.


The neat stack job that Daddy did. Looks like he's done this before, yes? Father knows best.


After the majority of the whole bricks were dug out, we were left with this messy pile. I have plans to stack the 3/4 and 1/2 brick pieces, too, but we were both too tired from the work and heat to do anymore this Demo Day.


Here you can see how much we lack before it's truly taken down to the floor (and below).


What a mess! Looks like the thing just exploded, doesn't it?


Outside, the side of my house where the brick are stacked. Looks like progress...


Thats a lot of brick. I plan to reuse it, probably to close in the front of the house's foundation. My house is built up on foundation piers, and I want to close in the area between them in the front. This had been attempted once by another owner, but it has fallen in, now.


A dirty, dirty man. And this is after I've cleaned up a bit. I didn't think I'd ever get clean in the shower that night.

One reason that we worked so hard this weekend, with dual Demo Days, is that you'll see a slight jump in the dates between these Demo Days and the next one. We went to the beach on vacation for a week (thanks, Uncle George!), and had a few birthdays in the family, too.