 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Demolition of the Old House
Thinking that we were going to get a building permit in a couple of months and not wanting to be the reason that construction was delayed, we had the old house on Lakeview demolished in May 2002.
We hired John Gilroy of Gilroy Excavation out of Anderson. John and his team spent the first two days parting out the house as we waited for the electric company to disconnect the power.
We were all poised and ready Wednesday morning to start the tear-down. We had a good group of Trinity Center residents joining us for the event. Many in town thought of this demolition as much as a blessing as we did. But, we had to wait a little longer... Mike and his boss were flying up from the Bay Area and Mike wanted to see the first swipe at the house and watch it turn to dust.
By 9am, the project was underway...
Wednesday, Day 3
The excavator ready to go
Friends stand by
Taking the first "bite"
Progress
Mike gets a lesson on driving the excavator
Working on the garage
Progress by end of day - dining room and master bedroom gone
Demolishing a house is easy, it is the cleanup that takes a LONG time. With such a small lot, even by Thursday we couldn't take down any more of the house without doing some clean up. The very large trailer that John had scheduled got delayed on another job on the coast so John had to use a smaller than optimal trailer.
All the rubbish had to be driven to the private Anderson landfill, which charges by weight.. Trinity County's dump is really a transfer station and garbage is haul to Anderson anyway. If we had used the Trinity facility, we would have had to separate the concrete, wood, and metal, and Trinity charges by volume (not good when you have a lot of loose stuff and lumber.) Shasta County's dump in Redding is only open to Shasta County residents.
Each round trip to the Anderson landfill took 4 hrs. Another delay was the chance that the drivers would get stopped by the Calif Highway Patrol that puts up random truck inspection stops along the route. Fortunently, , our drivers only got stopped twice.
Today was mostly cleanup.
Thursday, Day 4
More tear down
Loading the trailer
"Hidden" deck and porch
Friday -- As John removed the dining room floor, we discovered that the previous owner, when adding on, had simply built over the existing deck and porch. The old porch was pretty unique. It was built out of 2x4s laid side-by-side, on edge -- wood must have been cheap then.
Then came the roof removal. As John grabbed the roof on the south side, the entire roof section disconnected and came down in one complete piece -- taking everyone by surprise. John said that in all of his years demolishing buildings he had "never seen one come apart like this." Good thing we decided to rebuild!
At day's end, John and Kelli decided to leave the back wall still standing so that when Mike flew up that evening from the Bay Area for the weekend, at first glance from the runway, he might think that the house was still up. We were also going to leave the white brick chimney standing, but John decided that it was too unstable to be leave unattended overnight.
Friday, Day 5
"Hidden" deck and porch
Knocking down the chimney
Progress at day's end -- only one wall standing
Saturday -- John took down the rest of the structure and they kept hauling out the rubbish.
Saturday, Day 6
Now we can see the lake
Progress at day's end -- All Gone!
Sunday was a day off. Then, overnight is started to rain. Monday and Tuesday were slow, messy, and wet. John was able to get use of the larger trailer so we made better progress on the cleanup.
Day 8 -- Project Completed!
Well... 2002 and 2003 came and went.
And, the neighbors are tired of looking at two huge piles of concrete on the lot.
But, we are ready.
