Week 2 & 3 - Excavation and continued demolition....

These past couple weeks have been a little crazy!  The excavator, Sean, has been at the house with his giant bulldozer digging up our new property.  It has been an exciting, yet overwhelming second week.  Sean dug a 13ft by 30ft hole that goes about 12ft down in to our back yard for our basement and addition.  After a couple days of rain, it is now a swimming pool.  He also ripped the roof off the side porch, the concrete slab on top of the garage and the driveway because we are putting in a new sewage line and regrading the driveway.   Sean is also working on removing the 3 tree stumps in the front yard.

As for the three of us, we have been working hard on the demolition inside the house.  We tore down all of the plaster on the walls and the ceilings.  I thought the plaster would never go away!  I have been having nightmares that more plaster appears the next day.  We also tore up the plywood subfloor in what was the kitchen.  This task was by far the most difficult task so far.  The plywood was held in with screw-nails, or as we called them "Scrails."  It took all three of us 7 hours to completely remove the floor.  It was a long day of scrail removal!!   So, as you can tell by the pictures, the first floor of our house is completely gutted.

Lastly, Ryan, Michael, and our brother-in-law, Mike, started tearing up the concrete in the basement and old garage because we are replacing the old terracotta sewage pipe.   

Ryan hanging from the kitchen ceiling

Throwing plaster and old trim away

All those trash cans are full of heavy plaster, plus there is a pile of plaster on the ground behind the cans you can't really see...and it's 95 degrees outside...not fun.  One dump truck full was more than 5 tons of plaster; and we filled at least 4 dump trucks...

Ryan's dad Michael using his favorite tool, the grinder

Ryan's mom Sherry helping us take down plaster, it got so hot we put ice into hankerchiefs and put them around our necks...worked pretty well actually!

The start of the hole for the addition

More digging

The new view from the back door, a 12 foot drop

 

Where our new addition will be

A collage of the porch roof being taken off, literally took about 30 seconds

A little brick damage on the front, which we'll fix up later

Sean the excavator made quick work of what used to be a dog pen in the back yard

 

Ryan and Alex ripping out the last of the insulation between the first and second floor; thank the lord.  Ripping out insulation is by far Ryan's least favorite job so far.  Happy to be done with 3 straight days of cold showers to keep the fiber glass out of my pores.

 

We need 2 dump trucks to haul away all the dirt and concrete!!

We took the weekend off to travel to Mobile, AL to attend the wedding of our friends Travis and Kate.  The wedding was a great time and we are really happy for the newly married couple, who are currently honeymooning in Jamaica!

 Back to work first thing Monday morning, here's Sean taking out one of the huge stumps in the front yard

After weekend rains, the hole in the backyard turned into a swimming pool

Our brother in law Mike helped out over the weekend while we were gone and also hung around to help out on Monday.  Thanks Mike!

The concrete slab that was the porch floor being torn off

The bulldozer made easy work of it

After removing all the plaster from inside, we cleaned the place up to cut down on dust.  Here I am using my grandma Helen's old vacuum cleaner.  It worked surprising well considering I was vacuuming up chunks of plaster and nails.

 

 Looks a little different without any plaster

Ryan operating the concrete saw and Michael and Mike in the background with the jack hammer

Michael using the jackhammer. As mentioned above, we're tearing out the old terra cotta sewer drain and replacing it with PVC pipes

Ryan and Alex removing about 56,000 scrails from the kitchen sub floor.  If that wasn't enough, there were also screws hidden about an 1/8 of an inch below the surface which we had to find, dig out, and unscrew before we could take up the plywood.

Lindsay and Alex took down the wall between two bedrooms on the first floor

Michael playing around with his backhoe attachment for his tractor.  He was having way to much fun to call this work!

Stump #2 coming out

We arrived Wednesday morning at about 8:30 to find out that Sean the excavator had made quick work of the driveway.  He also commented that it was the thickest driveway he's every seen; just another piece of evidence proving that my grandpa Chuck didn't do things half assed!  (I plan on dedicating an entire future post to the various things we've found in the house that support this already well known fact)

Our house as of Wednesday, July 14th.  Major accomplishments so far:  1) Plaster removed from entire house, 2) Insulation removed from floor between first and second floor, 3) Porch removed, 4) Hole for addition dug, 5) Footers for new garage dug, 6) Trees removed from front yard (1 stump still remaing), 7) Sewer pipe exposed (ongoing), 8) Driveway concrete removed