The Porch Has Become a Deck

The boys are so excited to start demolition! They can't wait to start swinging sledge hammers and making things fall down. But first, we used small hammers and pry bars to remove paneling.

Then there was the problem of that love seat (in the photo, Jeff is standing next to it). We tried to move it out so the garbage truck could take it away but we couldn't fit it through the doorway. How did we get it in the house anyway? Jeff and his friend, David, begged to be able to dismantle it. What the heck? It gives them something to smash and saves me $30 that the garbage service wants to haul it away.

That love seat filled 5 large garbage bags! We knew we were going to generate a lot of garbage with this project so I started calling around for prices for a rolloff dumpster. Did you know you can only keep those for 15 days? So we decided to get a 3 cubic yard dumpster that is emptied once a week for $60 a month. That's more like what we need, at least until we are ready to knock down the whole house.

Anyway, back to the demolition of the porch. Here's a few pics of my helpers:

My grandson, Henry, using a real drill to remove screws from the skirting.

Peek-a-boo!

Two of my favorite helpers!

But this one is not:

Ewwww! Creepy! It slithered away under the house. I'm NOT looking forward to seeing that again!

The missionaries from our church have been asking when we were starting the demolition project so they can come help. Our ward currently has 5 missionaries (not sure why) so I invited them over.

They took out the windows, walls and removed two layers of shingles from the roof.

Then they removed the sheet rock ceiling and most of the paneling that was the roof. They really did a lot of demo that day! They left us with a shell:

Then the boys got their chance with the sledge hammers!

The porch is gone and all that is left is a deck...sort of. 

It really changes the look of the house. We are hoping to finish taking the rest of it down this week.