Mr. Contractor, Tear Down This Wall

News about the baby is exciting, but he isn't the only 2011 new addition we're focusing on right now. The reconstruction of the back of our house is well underway. Demolition is pretty much complete and the first steps of new construction have started. I'll post some pics of the construction progress, but first here's a quick review of the demolition.  

Since this post has so many pictures, I'll put all of them after the jump.  Click the "Read More" link to see the full post and all of the pics.




Garage - Jan 6 to Jan 8
The first main project was dismantling the garage.  The garage was in decent shape overall and wouldn't normally have to be taken down, but having the garage out of the way allowed us to drive in an excavator to dig out the new foundation rather than doing it by hand, and a much easier process for pouring the new cement.  The siding and roofing was dumped but the frame of the garage was really solid, so they basically created a Garage Construction Kit with each wall of the garage and the entire roof frame preserved to reuse when putting the garage back up after the house construction is done.


Back of the House - Jan 11 to Feb 11
Once the garage was down, the demo could start on the back of the house.  First they stripped off all of the siding from the back half of the house, all the way down to the original wood.  

View from cellar door out to backyard, looking at the old hallway under the kitchen

Back of the house with siding torn off

Back of the house with siding torn off

Back of the house with siding torn off

Side doorway from kitchen - this door was unusable because the stairs up to it were rotted away. Our original idea for updating the kitchen was only to get rid of this door and square off the wall... plans have changed a little bit since then.

View from the steps under the deck looking towards the hallway under the kitchen leading to the basement

An old support post - hard to believe this was basically all that was holding up the kitchen and master bedroom. No wonder the back of the house was lopsided.

Then they tore down the lath and plaster from the inside walls of the master bedroom and stacked it all in a huge pile in the lower half of the room.

Debris

All that's left of the tiny useless closet in the top half of the bedroom

More debris

Inside wall of the bedroom, including the newly-uncovered chimney (which will be removed sometime later on in the construction process)

Next they took apart the kitchen cabinets and stacked them in the dining room for later use in the temp kitchen (I'll put pics of that in a different post) and then tore down the inside walls of the kitchen.

Cabinets stacked in the dining room

View from the dining room into the kitchen

Demolished kitchen, looking towards the back of the house

Looking at where we used to have our kitchen table. The white door on the right is the same one with the rotten stairs seen in an earlier pic

The pipe on the left is where the sink and dishwasher used to be

Side window in the back part of the kitchen

Side window in the front half of the kitchen. You can see the 1st floor section of the chimney on the left.

With all of the interior demo done, they tore down the exterior frame starting with the master bedroom and working down to the deck.

Master bedroom mostly taken down

This is the cleanest our bedroom has ever looked

Back of the house cleared back to the demising walls

This part of the second floor that's sticking out a little bit further is the upstairs bathroom. So when we use the shower, we're basically hanging out over the construction site. We had some problems with the bathtub pipes freezing for a few days, so Larry the contractor rebuilt the temp section under the tub after this picture was taken to add more insulation and include the space under the bathtub into the heated section of the house.

Looking at where the old useless kitchen door used to be. In the bottom left of the pic you can see the temporary basement door and demising wall