MP House Diary #1 - Demolition

The house comes down! This was the beginning of a 8 week demolition by hand. The plan was to save the main floor walls and add a second story. Once we got into it we discovered rotten framing and decided that given all the changes we were making to that main floor exterior wall that it made most sense to remove the walls  and re-frame the main floor exterior walls with 2x6's. At that point it opened up some new possibilities. Why not take off the main floor joists and raise the basement height to code minimum at least? This is how change orders happen. 

Existing 1941 home. Cute but all original and needed a major upgrade.
Our plan was to transform this into something entirely different. 

View from neighbors house to the South. 

Removal of the masonry chimney by hand. 

Old stair going up to the old 1/2 second story. 

Dumpster couldn't be pushed back to the house
due to 24" difference in grade between alley and
backyard. Therefore, all debris had to be loaded
by hand.  24 dumpsters later we were finished. 

Front of old house. Rotten sheathing and all!

View of  interior of old house. 2x4 walls with no insulation.
This house was expensive to heat! Notice scaffolding. I
don't like heights!! 

What's left of the chimney. Note the duct
protruding out of the top. This was the exhaust
for the old oil furnace.

Only the stair left now. Main floor framing was so
rotten and hacked through that my framer decided it
was best to remove the rest of it. I did recycle the
bay window you see in the foreground. 

Off came the old floor joists to be reused. We decided to raise up the
main floor to give the basement the proper height once we decidedthat the rest of the main floor walls were going to come down.
The old furnace is in the foreground. 

Scott Grondahl the framer was nice enough to
remove the rest of the chimney for me. Thanks Scott!