There was quite a bit of work involved and for the final stages, my contractor gave assistance. Anyway, I plugged away at it most days for most of the day. This is what it looked like at the midpoint of demolition.
Prior to this, while working on the attic ventilation, the contractor (Daniel) strengthened the roof trusses so these would not need the support of the partition between the rooms. This view to the South. One reason I purchased this house is that it has a full Winter exposure to the sun, which (here in the Northern Hemisphere), gets closer to the southern horizon between the Winter equinox and solstice.The reason for this is to take full advantage of passive solar heating between the Autumn and Spring equinoxes. The next pic shows the 'demo' work near the end. You can see the window in the wall facing South. This is to be replaced by a taller window and 6 foot (1.83 metres) sliding patio door opening onto the deck. The present deck will be extended across the width of the
southern wall, covering a potting room and lower entrance that will be opened to the laundry room. A little more sunlight will enter this room than into the kitchen/breakfast room section, but the whole thing will be nearly symmetrical about the mid-North-South axis.Presently, all that needs to be done in this new room is finishing drywall repair to the wall and ceiling. I will wait for the completion of the window and door work before doing this. When completed, it will be great to be able to walk right out onto the deck and catch the warming sun.
All this will allow heat and light to enter the southern rooms. At night this will have to be conserved, since windows are about as good as letting heat out as in, so I will use the lumber from this demolition to construct insulating shutters to cover the windows at night. There is an equivalent of about 18 windows around the house, so this will take a bit of work and I might not get it all done. We shall see.
Yesterday, the work began preparing the foundation area for the potting room and the deck extension. This is how it looked at the start of the day. You can see my little garden. So far, six zucchini, one cucumber, and the promise of a dozen tomatoes. Lumber from the bedroom 'demo' is stacked under the present deck. On Wednesday of this week, I disassembled the external stair. The next day the Bobcat arrived on its flat bed and was unloaded.
And yesterday they got to work; here we go!
Lots of interesting stuff came out, bits of the previous house which had a gas leak in the basement back in 1972 or so and exploded, as well as a lot of rubble which looks like ceramic moulds for casting glass ware.I now have a big hole in the back yard. The laundry window you see in the lower left will become a door, opening into the potting room. Rear entry will be into this room below the deck via descending stairs. The deck will get a new stairway leading up to a bridging section between the two decks. I plan to use this room particularly in the Spring to bring on early plantings. The floor will have radiant heat available on demand so should be a good place in which to work.
We think about three weeks to complete all this work. Further work will relate to making the living room and kitchen/eating area into one space, as with the bedrooms. Whether I can attempt this prior to going back to Australia for two or so months, mid-October, I am not sure. The main concern is to get the house ready for Winter. I will offer short postings so you can follow the work. This will mostly complete work that I cannot easily do myself. The rest will be up to me.
On the energy conservation front, focus is on upgrading the heating/hot water side. The house has hot water driven baseboard heaters. The current boilers will be replaced by a high efficiency combined system. With passive solar heating and nocturnal heat conservation, I hope for really low winter energy bills. Waiting for my natural gas supplier to come up with the research on this.
I hope you keep on watching this space.
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