The Demolition Phase

The Old Dining Room (new kitchen)

We have been struggling to get the old floor coverings up around the house. It seems the people that put them down had little idea of what they were doing. The indoor/outdoor carpet they used was glued to the floor with some really strong stuff. Under that we found in the bathroom vinal tile squares on top of roofing paper. Oh my gosh! In the kitchen, the carpet was on top of vinal squares also. These were on top of ceramic tiles which. The dining room was easy enough. Just the carpet to pull up. All of the floors were once lovely hard wood floors. There seems to have been a kitchen fire at some point and rather than refinish it they just went over it with the tiles.

Everyone got into the act. All of the kids were thrilled and actually fighting to get to rip up the wall. After all, how many kids get permission to destroy the house? Usually, they get in trouble for anything they break. The amount of debris that we pulled off the walls is staggering. Because this is an old house with slats and plaster wall covering, there was a lot of wood to come down along with the plaster. Quite a bit of time spent on stripping the walls.

It's amazing this section of the house was able to stay standing at all. It appears that the stairs were at one point behind the dining room wall we need to remove. The wall was put in place in a rather patch work manner. I am just glad that no one ever fell through the ceiling from the upstairs hall way.

We did manage to find a secret room. Well not really, just wasted space. There was an area behind the dining room wall 4'x3' that was wasted space. It was just walled over. I almost expected to find a body in there. Then hoped for money. Neither showed up. Well, this adds 12sqft to our house. Not much, but every little bit helps. Right about now I am considering moving the water heater to downstairs in order to gain another 3'x3' section of the house upstairs. There is some more wasted space down here that would be perfect for a stubby water heater. We could always use another 9sqft of living space! But that will be for another project.

After a great deal of work and a few long weekens, the last of the flooring and walls have come down. Whew! You can't see it in the pictures, but there is no insulation in any of the exterior walls. No wonder we always had such high power bills.

See the new kitchen get assembled

The Bathroom

One look at these pictures and you can see that the bathroom floor (just on the other side of the dining room wall) was also messed up. So out came the toilet and in went new flooring there too. This was a much smaller section of floor, but quite hard to work in because of the limited space.

See the bathroom get assembled

The Old Kitchen (new dining room)

Although this section is deticated to demolition, we actually did put some of the house back together before ripping the rest of it appart. For one thing we needed our bathroom back. That was a short project really. Then the Kitchen and the boy's room was worked on. After the kitchen was put back together, we continued demolition by taking down the old kitchen.

It is another mess in the works. But all the old cabinets had to come down. There was a great deal of junk behind them and under them. We found a couple spots where holes in the floor went all the way though to the dirt under the house. That explains the draft we always felt in the kitchen. The holes were quickly repaired with new 3/4" decking. When we are done there will be another 1/2" of decking over the entire floor to allow us to put tile down. But for now we are simply trying to ripp it all down to make way for the new dining room.

See the new dining room get assembled

The Girls Room

The chimney goes all the way from the first floor where it was used to vent the smoke from a wood stove for heat and one for cooking. It takes up some room in the girl's room and exits through the crawl space in the attic. This entire structure is useless to us so out it goes to give more living space.

Once the portion on the roof and in the crawlspace came down, the section from the girl's room came out. It is amazing how easy it is to remove the chimney. They do weigh a lot though. Packing the bricks down the stairs 8-10 at a time sure does work up a sweat. The kids and I took turns taking the bricks down. Dusty and I did all the packing of the heavy bricks. Dezerae decided it was too much work after a single load. She did move all the bricks from the front of the house to the back. I just tossed them from the roof to the front yard.

After we were done on the second floor it was time to take out the remaining portion on the first floor. There isn't much. The chimney doesn't go to the floor. It only goes about 3 feet from the ceiling. The rest is supported by 2x4 stilts. There was no fire place so no need to go all the way to the floor.

The chimney doesn't look all that big once it is all stacked up in the back yard. We took this pile of bricks and turned it into a walk way around the garadge. This area gets muddy in the winter so this saves us from a large dumping fee and serves us well by keeping our feet clean. You can read about this on our yard page if you like.

See the girls room get assembled

The Living Room

We also decided to rip up the living room. We started on the inner wall where you pass into the hall or go up the stairs. The arches were simple door openings with the doors removed long ago. The casings had to go and the entire wall had to have the slats and plaster stripped. This made way for the clean arches like the other rooms were to get. You can see the end result and construction on the living room page. Here are the images of the old wall and openings coming down.

I still find it hard to believe how much debris there is after ripping down only a single wall. All the junk you see in the pile came from the living room wall. That wall is only 20 feet long and 8 feet tall and it had 2 large openings in it. Still that pile really did come from the one wall. Trust me, that wieghs a lot too!

See the living room get assembled

The Hall & 5th Bed Room

The hall had a bit of distruction as well. We ripped down the wall that seperates the hall from our computer room (the den). The goal was to turn the den into a 5th bedroom (we will still use it as our computer room though) and to clean up the usability of the hall where the washer/dryer are located. The people that owned the house before must have been drinking because they put the wall down on top of the carpet! And there were only 6 full studs holding this 13 foot long wall in place. And two were around the door in the middle of the wall. The wall always rattled and we didn't know why. Now we know.

You see that desk, it was custom built by Glenn after moving in. It was one tough desk. Two full size adults could easily stand on it. It was the hardest thing to take out. Oh well. It was fun to build and fun to rip out as well. Below are a couple more pictures of the room as we ripped it apart.

See the hall & 5th bed room get assembled

The End

This marks the end of the demolition. The house has been totally ripped apart one room at a time and the following pages will show you how it all went back together. Keep in mind that this project was not all at one time and we actually had to live in the house while working on it.