Demolition Time

For those of you who love mould, cat urine, and insect damage this post is for you. We have truly started demolition and it is a spectacular mess.

The two certainties of renovation on this scale with a property of this age (and neglect) is that things will often take longer and cost more than anticipated. We certainly underestimated the amount of moisture damage that we would find, and the volume of waste is much higher than anticipated.  In several rooms of the house there was drywall over strapping over wood paneling, over plaster and lath.  The roof appears to have 3 layers of asphalt shingles over remnants of cedar shakes and it has leaked substantially.   The entire main roof has mould and water damage,  the floor boards in the finished area of the attic are saturated with pet urine to the extent that it makes your eyes water (if anyone wants some old beige carpet reeking of cat urine and infested with mould spores give us a call - sure to go quick).  The back room, which we planned to remove, is only standing because of drywall and an exterior 7/16” sheathing, because the entire core of one wall has turned to mush.  When it rains the water runs right through it.   We also can’t interest any local salvage companies to take our trim, stairs, or other details.  They claim they have enough of this in stock and it does not move quickly.  We did find some huge pine boards though as sheathing – one 21” wide.  We will have to pull that off for use elsewhere.

The implications of all this for our One Planet action plan is that it is going to be very challenging to meet our diversion targets.

1. plaster, drywall, old paneling all has lead paint so we could not do anything with it – more layers = more landfill.
2. The back room is now going to be removed by a backhoe because there is nothing salvageable and it is not stable.
3. Some of the wood we planned to salvage is mouldy and or soaked with urine – so it adds to the landfill pile.
4. No salvage opportunities for stairs and wood details – more for landfill.
   

Our timeline and budget are at risk.  We estimated $15k for demolition and have spent $10k already and we are about 1/3 done.  We have removed 70 cubic yards of waste to landfill as of today.

We have attached a couple of pictures to remind people why renovation is always more challenging than new build.