Demolition Derby

In December 2011, I introduced the world to our garage & basement: What's In The Basement?

I also mentioned in that post that the first big project we will be doing is modernizing the foundation under the kitchen & porch, & making those storage spaces into some kind of usable living space like a guest room.

We are finally just a week or so from officially beginning that project! In addition to updating the foundation, AJ had the brilliant idea to make that living space a master bedroom suite instead of a guest room.

There's lots of preparation to do ahead of the start date. The biggest one is removing all the sheet rock on a little room that was built in the garage decades ago, & the false flooring next to it. Here are the photos of all that stuff that I posted in 2011:

Interior of the room, facing the street.

Interior of the room, facing the garden.

Exterior of the room, with the street at right.

Facing the same direction, 

showing the false floors to the left of the room (essentially 3 platforms).

At first I was planning to do the work myself. Then, I decided that was crazy, & decided to leave it for the contractors. Then, AJ convinced me that not only was it doable, but that it would save us enough money to pay for a nice bathtub in the bathroom we're putting in under the kitchen.

We were getting ready to do all that work ourselves, but then five very hard-working & generous friends excitedly offered to help, so today we made a party of it.

Additionally, people were so excited about smashing things, I decided to ask for their help with a separate project to address our dirt patch of a front yard after this happened:

When we moved in, all these red concrete garden edging things were left in the house:

I have been trying to figure out what to do with these for the past two years. We don't want to use them in the garden, & what a nightmare to dispose of (each one probably weighs about ten pounds). A couple weeks ago, I realized that if we could get them smashed up small enough, it would look nice over the reddish dirt we have in the front yard (& would also hopefully deter the neighborhood cats from using our yard as their litter box). So that was the plan.

We started off the day with donuts and coffee:

And then we set straight to work!

Robin & AJ started smashing the red concrete edging things, while Amanda & Shayle attacked the sheet rock:

Meanwhile, Pickles kept an eye on progress from the yard:

It was really a very impressive mess they made:

Meanwhile, good progress was being made in the backyard:

Back in the garage, once the sheet rock came down off the wall of the house this is what was underneath:

More lath!

And some sheets of aluminum, that appear to be duct sections that have been flattened out:

We'll figure out what that's about later.

Back in the yard, Robin & AJ were joined by Susie, & smashing continued:

Before too much longer, the work inside the garage was done:

And the truck, generously lent to us by Jon, was loaded:

Then, Robin, Susie, & AJ were off (very slowly...about 25 mph) to the dump:

Amanda, Pickles, & I stayed back at the house to order lunch. Pickles had to sneak in a quick nap after all her hard work this morning:

When Susie, Robin, & AJ got back to the house, they gave us the surprising news that the load was 1,000 pounds. Wow, that was a lot of sheet rock! And they apparently had the time of their lives.

Lunch:

More napping:

Then back to work!

Shayle & Susie had had to leave a little earlier, so it was four of us for the afternoon -- Robin & AJ went back to the yard, & Amanda & I set about breaking up the false flooring:

Pickles kept up her supervisory responsibilities:

It was kind of tough work, getting the planks up, but we made steady progress throughout the afternoon:

AJ & Robin made steady progress, as well, and soon buckets of broken red concrete started to make their way through the garage & into the front yard.

The amount of debris under the flooring was incredible:

There was an old rats' nest under there, complete with a couple dozen empty walnut shells. And this unhappy former resident:

We were very careful with clean up & disinfecting. And soon were left with this:

Similar view to the 2011 photo above, with the ladder.

It's pretty incredible how much getting that sheet rock out opened up the garage:

We were originally thinking that we would tear the framing out, as well, but AJ & I are now rethinking that. It's nice to have a space that's separated from the car, & I like the idea of keeping intact a part of the house that's probably older than I am. Our contractor once mentioned having done a job where he put plexiglass or something similar over interior wall studs instead of sheet rock, to allow light through from the windows & to create a sense of space in the room. We are thinking about doing that in the new bathroom, & it seems like it may be a good idea in here, as well.

Here is the result of the very hard work that Robin & AJ did all day:

Looks great, guys!

After the work was done for the day, we spent the evening relaxing & recovering, & watching a very fine film:

Pickles was especially exhausted, & konked out for a couple hours:

Next up: Cutting down a mostly dead rosemary bush! More moving around of stuff -- out of the construction site & into storage in the the house/yard! A stiff back!

Thank you very, very much Amanda, AJ, Jon, Robin, Shayle, and Susie, for all your generosity & hard work!!!