A man and his saw...

So much has happened at the jobsite (we've stopped calling it a house, because it isn't one anymore) since the last time I posted.

The early part of last week was all about blown in fiberglass insulation. I spent Monday afternoon scooping it up with a dust pan and shoveling it into garbage bags. It was 95 degrees on Monday. When I took off my respirator sweat actually dripped out of it, but when I finally went home I got to take the nicest shower of my life. Since I was thoroughly done at that point, I was surprised when Eli said that he was still working when I called him around 8 o'clock. I stopped by the jobsite and this is what I saw:

That would be the porch...or rather what used to be the porch. Since we've owned the house we've been rather tentative about walking on the north half of it. Aside from the fact that it was visibly detached from the house, it was about 6 inches lower than the south side of the porch, and bounced noticeably underfoot. Now that we've gotten a closer look at it we've found that the whole thing was basically held up with two cinder blocks that had been shoved in behind the stairs...ah home improvement. Here's Josh with our house number...
We figured we'd have to start forwarding the mail, but our mail woman must have an adventuresome streak because the next day there was post in the mailbox.

And the destruction continues:

This is Joe. Joe comes with a saw.

I always thought that Joe's saw was a concrete saw, but it turns out that when you fit it with something called a "rescue blade" it becomes a demolition machine. A rescue blade is what the fire department would use to cut through the side of your house if you were trapped inside and couldn't get to a window or a door. Since we are erecting a new second story there didn't seem to be any point in tearing off the shingles. Instead Joe used the rescue blade to cut our roof into strips, straight through the deck boards and through the four (!!) layers of shingles, that's about 2" of asphalt. Once they got the system down they went through the whole roof in less than 3 hours...not counting the 3 hours it took to find someone who could sharpen the blade and get it back to us on the same day. By mid afternoon Isis and I were watching as the east wall came down.

Going, going, gone.

After that it's been all about filling up dumpsters. We will be getting our fourth one delivered tomorrow, and will need at least one more after that. Eli estimated 3 dumpsters for the whole job, so that will push our budget slightly, but it's worth it to see them haul away all of that debris.

Since the roof came off it's back to interior demolition. If you're impatient you can check out the flickr site, there's a permanent link on the sidebar that should take you right there. The best pictures are in the "demolition" set, of course. Otherwise I will update within the next couple of days and post some pictures of the inside....everything must go!