Taking Down the Porch and Taking Up the Deck

Well, we had a few weeks on hold because of various schedule issues but we are back up and running. Our contractor finished up the official drawing of the addition and then we walked it through the permit process. All in all, it could have been worse but it is pretty much the nature of the beast that 15 minutes of talking to people and filling out the required forms ends up taking 3-4 hours of waiting in various lines. However at the end of the day (well, actually two days) we were all set. The plans were approved and we got our building permit and have it proudly displayed in the front window.

One of the early "sweat equity" opportunities identified for us in this project was the destruction of our porch and deck.

The area of the porch and deck fit entirely inside the walls of the new addition. There are partial concrete slabs that are going to be kept in place to help make the basis of the new floor in the addition. (Fresh concrete will be poured over them.) The Porch was 10'x15' and the deck was 10'x17'. Both had been built before we purchased the house and honestly, they had been built very well. They served their purposes but their time had come.


The first issue was clearing everything out of the way. The porch had turned into a bit of an outdoor junk room years ago but after last summer it had served as a temporary shed as well. As you can see, there was a lot of "stuff" that needed to go some place else before we could start wrecking anything.



So after a little child labor, we had a lot of stuff in the trash and the rest of it under tarps. (This did remind me that, "Oh yeah... I'm still gonna need a new shed with this is all over." D'oh.)

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Being fully aware of our limitations, Mrs Toy Making Dad and myself called in some assistance...

To the Crawfish Signal!

Lucky for us, Crawfish himself was available to pop on by in the Saab-marine with assorted pry bars and a nifty hammer or two. He was a tremendous help and honestly, there is no way we could have gotten this project done without his help. (Seriously - Thanks man.)

Having seen enough videos of people pulling down structures and taking the rest of the house or a bunch of windows with them, we decided that we would "unbuild" both structures as opposed to just smashing them and then cutting stuff up.

Act 1, Scene 2 from Tennessee Williams'
"Crawfish on a Hot Tar Roof"

We started on the roof. Initially I carefully took each staple out of the shingles and pulled them off one at a time. I really didn't want to worry about anyone, especially our little one, stepping on those. We made good progress but as the sun came up and we got closer to the edge of the porch, we switched to pulling up big sheets at a time. The staples pretty much pulled right up and the ones left behind were no threat since we left them in the boards. The tar paper underneath was a real, ahem, sticking point. I wonder if we had started earlier in the day if it would have peeled off easier? Live and learn.

With the shingles gone it was now, HAMMER TIME!

We hammered the plywood from inside off of the 2x4 rafters and bent them back to pry off as needed. A little difficult back at the new roof line because of the tar paper, but it went surprisingly fast. So fast in fact... that I failed to get any pictures with the sheathing in place.

Sledge hammer hits on the gutter end freed up the rafters and then we were able to twist them off of the hangers attached to the house. The far wall was made of 4x4s that were bolted together. Seriously  sturdy stuff. Lacking a Sawzall (or similar non-trademarked reciprocating saw) we took the back wall down as one piece and tossed it in the dumpster. Bye porch. (Memories include a dinner when we first moved in, the older girls' birthday party in 1st grade, a lot of toys and whole bunch of lint from the dryer covering the floor. And spiders. Lots of spiders.)

We then turned our attention to the deck. The deck was made of 2x8's and everything was nailed, as opposed to screwed, together. Pretty much just attacked it one board at a time with pry bars and hammers.

No big surprises in the destruction although there was an odd dynamic where every board that my wife went to take up just popped up with no problem while the boards Crawfish and I attempted were all held in with tungsten or depleted uranium 17" long twisted nails. We got it done. Eventually.

There were a couple a surprises that we uncovered though. First off we found that there was a slab poured along the back door that was covered by the deck. This may save us a few bucks when the new slab is poured for the addition floor.

 

 

 

 

There were quite a lot of patio stones used as supports and various places around the porch and deck. There are enough that I think they could form the basis of the floor for the new shed and we wouldn't have to pour a slab for it instead. That would save money, but the main thing is I like the idea of not having to break up a slab if I ever want to move the shed

We also found a concrete monkey skull. We set it on post as a warning to all the followers of the various monkey cults in our neighborhood. (Note to self - maybe you should play with concrete more often.)

So, a second day of a few tidbits of destruction and some general cleaning up and we are set and ready for the footings to be dug and then poured. The sand is from, of all places, the sand box.







The back of the house looks huge now, so we have to fill it up with buildings and what not.

Destroying the Kitchen in Order to Save It

Our kitchen was not awful. The cabinets were starting to show their age and the partcle board shelves were starting to sag. The floor was a vinyl sheet that had seen better days and the counter top was pretty much shot. On the plus side, we painted it pretty happy colors a few years ago and the toaster oven works great. Wait... now that I think about it our kitchen was shot.

Also, there was some weirdness to it.

Mainly:

• The kitchen was shaped like a giant "L" with the lower leg being a pantry.
• Our washing machine was behind enormous sliding steel doors.
• The dryer was around the corner in the pantry and a good 20 ft from the washer.
• The refrigerator was around the corner as well.

Okay, this may be hard to visualize so here is the general layout of our kitchen at the beginning of the project and the hoped for general layout of the kitchen at the end of the project. (BTY, not to scale. The addition will be much deeper that I showed below and there will be another room to the right of the utility room.)

So we are destroying the kitchen while we wait on the permits for the addition. We decided that with drains and water supplies being put into the future 3/4 bath, we could use it as a temporary utility room until the addition was completed.

The steel doors. The old hot water heater used to live ther as well	The pantry Full o' stuff as usual

The first step was to clear everything out of the pantry and from behind the steel doors (Wasn't "Behind the Steel Door" a 70's movie... Oh. Wait. Never mind.) Once everything was gone the real destruction could begin. Since we are on a slab and the drain for the house was basically right next to where the washing machine was, our contractor needed to pull up the vinyl floor and then jack hammer a series of trenches to contain the drains that the new bathroom and utility room will need.

It actually took longer for them to get the floor and adhesives up than it took to jackhammer the slab.

Next to the washing machine with the drain in the wall.	The pantry floor looking a lot like the grand Canyon.

Our house was built in the mid-1950s so it was sorta cool to think that the dirt below the slab hadn't seen the light of day in nearly 60 years.

After the trenches were done, the pipes went in.

The large grey pipe is actually the old vent and was taken out completely. New venting is going in.	The tall pipes in the foreground will actually be drains in the wall that will separate the kitchen and bath.

We got a little lucky in that the drain for the house was in a spot and deep enough to easily allow enough "fall" for the new drains to being installed and flow properly.

Once all the drains were in, the floor was patched with concrete and the contractor started additional framing and electrical work.

One of the things our contractor is doing that was clearly not done during previous renovations in the house, is getting rid of unused parts. That's why the unused vent was removed. He actually hauled out a fair amount of junk from attic that was just parts that were left behind when our furnace was replaced several years ago.

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So we got our official list of uncrossed "T's" and undotted "I's" from our county zoning unit concerning our Special Permit. All in all, they were very minor but since this was an exercise in jumping through hoops for the sake of jumping through hoops, we did just that. I ran the corrections out to their office and made sure that everything that was required was now in and acceptable. I was told that the first part of the process would be done the following week and that our request was now being forwarded to the board that votes on them. We would be getting a letter telling us our hearing date which may be up to three months from now.


We got the letter the other day and it contained a very pleasant surprise... our hearing has been scheduled for next month! Wow. Super cool. Soooooooo, assuming we really are in the home stretch on this, we may actually be two to three months ahead of schedule when the exterior construction starts.


Maybe we will be pretty squared away by Christmas after all. Which is cool because I hear that Santa sometimes skips houses under construction. It is some sort of OSHA requirement for him.