The Demolition Begins...

I started on the interior of the foyer. Until we can move the piano the POs left behind, and unwire the fire hazard electrics, it has to maintain a semblance of water resistance. Remarkably, some of it was reasonably well constructed. All that meant is that it was easier to take apart and some of the materials were salvageable.


Starting with the front wall, the plastic covered paperboard came off easily enough. The chipboard behind it was starting to compost however...




The door frame is glued to the brick (well, I did say some of it was well constructed, not all...)



*gasp* there was insulation in the wall.



The planks on the ceiling came off relatively easily, once the first one was out. Getting the first one out however, required some work. All the wall panels around the upper edge had to come off, as did some of their supporting struts. That wasn't difficult, everything was held together with a couple of nails and some glue.

There's even more insulation in the roof space. This space is actually better insulated than the attic... you know the bit above the interior of the house, where the heat is...




Is that roofing tile I see before me?



Indeed it is:




Behind the upper paneling you can see the original roof. The roof for the addition just rests on it:


And there you see the cause of part of the leak. If water gets under the roof of the addition, it comes down the valley... and in through the hole drilled to put the wiring through! Just out of picture to the left is one of several wiring junctions, complete with bare wires. That hasn't been taken out yet as I need to shut off the electrics for the entire house, because who knows what circuit(s) that's actually wired into!

Salvage: The main planks from the ceiling came off cleanly, as did the roof insulation, the pieces against the wall to the left are trash however - wood covered in glue, plastic coated paperboard, etc.



Whilst doing some gardening as a break from demolition, I uncovered a toad. It seems smaller than the one we had earlier in the year, so there's two of them around at least.




And the monster plant lurking behind the house, fighting it out with the rosebush to see how much of the garden they can take over, is flowering. Only one flower for half a dozen seven foot stalks, but it's pretty:

I'm no expert, but...

...I suspect that the way the POs converted the bath into a shower is not the correct way to do it. Destruction is usually pretty satisfying, so I decided to take on the task of dismantling their handiwork this week.

Here's the bathroom as photographed by M when he toured the house for the first time:


(No, I don't know why they had shower doors and a shower curtain up.) I took the shower doors out weeks ago to open the space up a bit.



After I took the doors out, I was able to examine the shower more closely and thus learn How Not To Build A Shower:

• Screw strips of wood into walls over existing wallpaper. Don't bother sealing that or anything else against moisture.


• Nail unevenly cut pieces of tileboard to top two feet of wood, disregarding instructions on back of said tileboard telling you explicitly not to do any such thing.


• Glue unevenly cut pieces of hard plastic sheeting to the rest of the wood and to the existing tile below. The more glue the better.


• Caulk? What's that?


• Nail pieces of wooden molding up around shower edges so as to hide uneven edges and hold shower doors in place.

Fortunately(?), the examination also showed that what was visible of the original tile seemed to be intact. And indeed, after pulling down the plastic, all of the tile except for an area that appears to have once had a built-in soap dish is intact. I consider it a dubious fortune because it's all a hideous, repellent shade of pink. I suspect that the bathroom at one time had a matching pink sink and toilet to go with the pink floor, walls and tub.



21 pieces of wood, 52 screws, and one bandage later (helpful hint: if you think you should be wearing work gloves but are too lazy to find them, find them anyway)...




...destruction phase 1 was complete.

Now to scrape off all that glue and wallpaper backing...

...what.

Sometimes I think of our PO as a benign (but considerably less genius) version of Bloody Stupid Johnson.

Don't have cable television in all rooms of the house, including the additions? Just make holes in all the exterior and interior walls and run yards more cable through!

Can't pay for the alarm system anymore? Hey, why not just cut the wire and shove it under the carpet?

Family members don't appreciate your scintillating sense of humor? Scrawl, in permanent marker, 'the queen is a lezbo!' on the inside of your workshop cabinet and get a secret chuckle every time you open it. (Seriously, what!?)

Dining room not deadly enough? Bust a socket of your low-hanging light fixture and leave bare live wire sticking out. Make rowdy houseguests run the Electric Gauntlet.

Don't feel like moving entertainment stand to install new carpet? Don't bother -- carpet can be cut around your furniture.

Front door keeps denting baseboard heater? Install a doorstop...


...inside the heater.