It Was Demolition Day...

...at Casa JR.

When we purchased our house, we knew that there was a lot of work to be done to make it ours. The previous owners were the original owners of close to 30 years. The husband was not quite the craftsman that he thought he was, leading to problems that we bought in to fixing.

The Master Bedroom is done, the Master Bath is next on the list of indoor projects.

Today's demolition was an outdoor project. The previous owner had built the patio in stages. There are 7 different concrete pours and two different types of brick /pavestone additions. The patio cover was attached to the house and there was a built in dog run and a privacy fence under the cover. There is also a little pump room attached to the house for the above ground pool that I demo'd after the first summer. We took out the dog run and privacy fence right away upon moving in. The yard fence is adequate for privacy and we needed to open up the patio a bit.

Today was the day that I demo'd out the patio cover. It had some dry rot and carpenter ants were all over the place. But first things first. I had to go into work and make sure everything was lined out for my guys. After a short morning at work (3 hours) I come home and get ready for the demolition. We have wind chimes, a kiddie swing, lights, electrical, the satellite cable and stuff like that hanging from the cover. I had to get that all off before I could break out the heavy tools and the chain saw. About the time I finished up getting ready, a friend showed up with his trailer. It would have taken 4 or 5 pickup loads to get everything to the dump, but that Big Tex Model 50 LA trailer was plenty large enough for the job.

Once the trailer arrived, I started my demo work. A chain saw and some heavy tools made the job much easier. It is end of month, so V was working closing out the books for the medical office that employs her. It was just me and the patio cover. A quart and a half of Gatoraid and two quarts of water later, and the patio cover was in the trailer. The demolition got a bit interesting when I cut through a carpenter ant nest. I was covered in ants. They were inside my safety glasses, inside my shirt, they were everywhere. It's a good thing they were carpenter ants. I would be one hurting puppy if I had that many fire ants on me.

V got done just about the time I put the last piece into the trailer. We swept up the mess, hooked the trailer up to her new jeep (my truck did not have the right electrical hook up for the trailer electrical), and headed off to the dump. The dump closes at 4:30, we got there at 4:29. Whoo hooo. 880 pounds of patio cover is now in the Arlington landfill and my back yard looks much better.

A couple of discoveries when removing the cover. I now know where possums and the like are getting into my attic. There is a 5" x 8" hole under my eves that is due to dry rot. One 2x4 is rotted up into the attic. It's a good thing I have a great roofer on call at work. I am not looking forward to this report.

I did not remove the facing boards that attached part of the patio cover to the house. The last time the house was roofed, they tiled over these boards. I'll wait until my roofer comes out to remove those, I'm sure that there will be problems behind those boards.

The joys of home ownership.

On the plus side. Purchasing an older, fixer upper house at a good price is a nice hedge against housing market corrections.