My friend Paulie and I were talking a few days ago. "How goes the porch demolition?" he asked me.
"Not so great," I replied. "It's slow going because there are three layers of roofing, two layers of decking, a lot of joists, and nails about every three inches. The damn thing's overbuilt."
He laughed. "You are complaining because something's built too well? That's a first."
I suppose he's right. But the porch really is overbuilt.
How overbuilt?
Well, Dylan's friend Steve (who's helping Dylan with the demo) has been a contractor for thirteen years and he said today, "This is the worst roof I have ever seen. Ever."
And then there's this:
That's my son hanging by one hand from the porch ceiling. After the joists have been cut through.
So there wasn't much hope on Saturday that any real progress would happen. But they persevered. And by "persevered" I mean that they got really mad and started whacking at the thing with axes and sledgehammers and pulling on it with giant crowbars and cussing until the air was blue.
And between all that on Saturday and further serious effort on Sunday, the porch looked like this:
All of the roof gone but the very edges, where the joists stick out over the fascia. (Is that right? Fascia?)
They cut those "roof edges" into chunks with a Sawzall and pried them off.
And now, about 95% of the roof is gone. Hooray! And my front door is open, to keep from breaking the glass in it. Not just to "cool the outdoors" as my friend Chris said. (Yes, it's already warm enough here for A/C.)
See those clapboards above the porch posts? Next workday, Dylan and Steve will cut through those (they're not original to the house) with a chainsaw and take out that part of the structure in small pieces. To avoid breaking either the posts or the decorative brackets (which Mare hand-made) they'll cut close to the ends of the brackets and take out post and all in a chunk.
I was so delighted that the roof is gone that I almost forgot I had to go to work Sunday night, so I didn't have time to clean up the demolition mess. This is what the porch and the front yard looked like when I left:
Whoops.