Goodbye To The Deck

A couple of months ago (maybe longer?), I started taking apart the deck on the back side of the house. It was old and the support beams were not in the best of shape due to our friends, the carpenter ants. Most of the cedar planks are still in decent shape though, so I plan on re-using them in some capacity during the remodeling. At the very least, I can plane them back down to fresh wood and use them to build storage shelving in the basement. This was quite a deck in its day, let me tell ya. The cedar planks on the deck were 2 x 12s that were anywhere from 17 to 21 feet long, so it wasn't a cheap deck to construct. If I remember the story correctly, the previous owners had the deck built when one of their daughters got married years ago. I think it was the site of the wedding reception. Those days are long gone though, so it was time for the deck to come down. Besides, the deck was located right where our kitchen addition will go, so it would have had to be removed anyway.

"Solid" is an understatement when it comes to describing the construction of this deck. There were 27 steel support posts anchored in concrete. Removing those posts was the project for this weekend. Knowing that it was more work than I could do with pure grunt work and a shovel, I asked my friend, Terry, for some help.

Terry is a great guy. He's got a great assortment of equipment, and he is always looking for an opportunity to help someone with it. Terry had helped me pull out some old fence posts a few years ago with his Kubota tractor, so I thought I'd see if I could recruit his help again. When I asked if he could help me with the deck, he was his typical eager self.

Terry showed up with his tractor -- complete with backhoe attachment -- at about 9:00 on Saturday. He did some masterful backhoe work! For the posts that were right next to the house, I (along with my buddy, Phil) did some digging with a shovel to loosen things up. By 11:30, we were finished. It's amazing what some well-operated hydraulics (and a little sweat) can accomplish.

I now have an impressive pile of steel posts and concrete piled at the edge of the woods south of the house. The next step will be to rent or borrow a cutting torch to cut the steel posts off of the concrete chunks -- after all, they will make a nice addtion to the next load of metal that I haul off to the scrap yard for $$$. The concrete "chunks", on the other hand, won't be quite so easy to dispose of. I suppose I'll wait until the next time I rent a roll-off container from the city, and dispose of them then. Anyone need an unwieldy boat anchor?

Now that the deck is completely gone, we've got a fairly clean slate to start the kitchen addition. We meet with our architect on Tuesday, so we're excited to see the ideas she's drawn up. Hey, we're actually making some progress!

The next demolition project? THE BOILER. (To be continued....)