More Demo!

I have come to LOVE demolishing things. It is sooo fun, and very therapeutic. Next on the Demo list was taking the siding off the north side of the house and removing the fireplace and chimney. We were sad to see it go, really. My dad installed the fresh air fireplace and spent weeks designing and putting up the rock wall around it.

I spent hours, growing up, looking at this wall and imagining faces and pictures in the rocks. I still do it...I see faces everywhere it seems. I'm glad I had the foresight to take a picture of this before we started pounding away. It was a bitter-sweet experience for me. I actually didn't do any demo on this one. Steve was very careful about how he took the rocks off the wall and we stacked and packed them carefully. It was sad to see all of my dad's hard work ripped apart. We are going to use the rocks to make a fire-pit and some benches for the backyard....and I think we might have enough to do it for Mom and Dad's place too!

Right about now I'm sure some of you are saying to yourselves - 'what were they thinking ripping out that work of art?' or 'how heartless and cruel of them!' Well, there are quite a few reasons for the fireplace to go. Because this is a fresh air fireplace it was letting in quite a bit of cold air in the winter months and it also requires a lot of wood to burn a really hot fire. It is difficult for us to get wood now - we used to get it for free - and hauling the wood is hard for Steve to keep up with, with his busy work schedule. Also, we are building on a garage with a second floor addition on that side of the house, and we were not allowed to build around the chimney. We may replace this with a wood burning stove in the corner that vents a little differently in the future though. There will be a new 'family room' in the addition, so we're not really sure what this particular room in the basement will be used for, and it may not be practical to have a fireplace there.

Anyway, back to the demolition!! Here are some awesome pictures of the process of getting the siding off and the fireplace out. Thanks to the missionaries and Richard and his crew!!

Once the siding was off and the rock was off - then we had the job of trying to get the fireplace out and taking the chimney off - which I thought I had a video of...but I guess I don't. It was interesting to see our fireplace go out the front door. I still can't believe that only 2 guys carried it out!! it was HEAVY!!

First they took the top of the the chimney off and then the top panel of the chase. After that they they pulled the rest of the chimney chase off (which is what I thought I had a video of - and it was really cool) then they hauled it away.

Then they disassembled the rest of the chimney pieces and carried out the fireplace - with much maneuvering to get it out of the hole - and we were left with a gaping hole in the side of our wall - see below. ;)

The hole did get framed in and protected on the outside and this is what it looks like now - awaiting the rest of it's makeover.

This was also the day that we took all the brick off the front of the house so we could start framing the new front entrance. What a mess that was! Steve had fun using our new little trailer for our ride-on mower to move all the bricks around behind the shed. (which I'll post pics of later) We'll use all those for another project down the road.