For the third and final time, we held a demo party. Saturday, with the help of a great many friends and family members, the entire second floor was demolished. We managed to fill the 30 yard dumpster and we still have a fair amount of debris waiting its turn to go down the chute and fill the next one, which arrived Tuesday. Everything that’s left should fit into this second one, and at that point the gutting of the interior will be complete. We were so bent on wrecking things that we didn’t get in-progress photos, but we did get before and after!
I didn’t get the ceiling demo done until Saturday morning because I spent some time improving the chute by adding a wider hopper and putting a ramp upstairs to enable full wheelbarrows to be emptied. I wasn’t able to put the top of the chute at floor level because the downspout cuts across the door, but using a chunk of the ramp I built for the basement dig-out solved the problem.
Part of the demo crew
Friday evening, Sarah dropped off the kids at her parents and picked up two of her nephews, Colin and David, and two of their friends, Dylan and Dustin. I picked up Will, in from Iowa City, and they spent the night. Saturday morning they were joined by Dean and Siobhan and Matt B. We got to work and Sarah’s brother, Matt, and his girlfriend, Amy, joined us in the afternoon.
Prybars, sledgehammers, 2x4s, regular hammers, shovels, buckets and wheelbarrows were put into action and the second floor came apart quickly. The plaster and lath, drywall and lath, random fiberglass insulation, and old trim all got ripped down, loaded into wheelbarrows or simply carried to the back, and chucked down the chute, while a rotating dumpster crew with shovels and rakes moved debris to the far end of the dumpster. Dust masks, goggles, gloves, boots, coveralls, bandanas, and hard hats all proved their worth and those cases where people didn’t avail themselves of them demonstrated their importance.
When she wasn’t doing demo herself, Sarah kept everyone going with sandwiches, water, Gatorade, Coca-cola, coffee, beer, and cider, and when we finished there was lasagna, shepherd’s pie, more beer and cider, wine, and scotch. Sarah’s also been working on clearing out the remaining debris this week into the second dumpster and we’re hoping to wrap that up and get the flooring out this weekend. A huge thanks from Sarah and I go out to everyone that made it!