The Porch

The big trick in the whole teardown process became separating the materials to be thrown away from the things that could be salvaged, and finding someplace to store the salvageable materials. It was obvious that a number of things would need to be stored temporarily in one spot, moved later to another location as work progressed, and then moved back when work in that spot was finished. So far this method is working out.

Tearing down the porch happened over the course of two weekends. The first weekend involved the siding and the porch roof. It turned out to be an interesting process with four different layers of shingles, including what I believe were the original wooden shakes, probably cedar. These were saved for a friend to use as kindling, since they were dry but too brittle to be useful in any other way. And we managed to get the deck boards off before dark.

The original Shakes

By the end of the first weekend most of the vinyl siding was off and stored, and the porch roof had been reduced to a framework, and piles of recyclable materials, salvageable materials, and trash. The shingles that were under the vinyl siding will stay up until the addition is enclosed to protect the north side of the house.

The weather cleared intermittently during the week and the remaining roof beams and the pillars were knocked/pulled down. The only casualty was a rhododendron which was munched when a beam pivoted unexpectedly on a nail and fell to the left of the porch instead of to the front. It survived, but lost a major limb.

The second weekend the porch rail and deck came down, with the help of a neighbor in exchange for any parts of the porch he wanted to salvage. Sadly, less of it was useable than we had hoped because of some rot and a great deal of excessive nailing. However, he did manage to get enough material to repair and upgrade his own porch, which was built at the same time and in the same style as my own.

At this point an unexpected problem occurred. Without the porch, my mail slot was too high for the mailman to reach and would be for some time to come. What I ended up doing was getting a temporary plastic mailbox and attach it to the stair rail on the sidewalk steps. It will stay for the duration of the construction.

After that Larry from Slater came out and built me a set of temporary stair and I took a sledge hammer to both the old cement staircase and the pad they were resting on. What fun. The iron railings went to The Rebuilding Center.

Finally, in preparation for the sewer work to come, I dug up the remaining shrubs from the front an heeled them temporarily into the lawn in back, thereby ruining my entire yard. They will be moved back to the front at the end of the project.

As a part of the teardown, I also separated out any metal (flashing, damaged down spouts, the porch ceiling) and put it into my weekly curb side recycling.

Some of the plants in the back.

Week 1 - The Sewer