Wait - that's not a load bearing stud!

[Christ]

I'm not sure how exactly this happened, but the whole roof section was being held up by a single 2x4, which was termite damaged and cracked severely. The one on the left is holding the roof up, the one on the right was pulled out by hand after this picture was taken.

We pulled that stud out by hooking to it with a chain and pulling it out with my dad's S10 (Same one I used to haul the Saturn.)



This section is being held up by nothing right now... it's just there. Damn it.

[Matt Herring]

Looks like it's going to be a good winter with all that firewood!

[Christ]

LOL - a good portion of the studs in that house are actually salvageable, as well as detail wood and the entire stacked stone foundation, which I plan to use as a fascia for my house.

We've pulled a good bit of the aluminum siding off for recycling (not re-use), and there's still another 100 lbs at least on the other side of the house. We're recycling as much of the copper wire as we can, and have already salvaged things like fixtures, conduit, outlets, and switches. The freezer that was left in this house is in my Father In Law's garage right now.

As much as we can, we're going to try to only leave biodegradable material. Obviously, we won't get everything cleaned up, and some of it will still get buried, but we're doing our best with bare hands and hand tools, and it's only me and my Father doing the job now. We've done more in just one day than the last crew got done in 3 months.

[bgd73]

wow. its like an 87 subaru with a bad rocker panel..it all just dangles there defying logic.

up to 77 pounds of steel replaced and the fifth reel of mig wire is coming to an end...No more defying logic. Have fun tearing down that place.

[Christ]

We finally managed to get that "floating" section down. Every piece of the new part of the house (the part we just removed) was built with 16D deck nails. These things aren't nails, they're spikes. And they don't like to let go. For anything. Not even a cheeseburger.

Speaking of cheeseburger... I got lunch at McD's the other day... and there's no bathrooms at that house.

Supposedly, we only have until the end of this month to do whatever we want with the house, before the church next door calls in the real demo crew to level it... I'm hoping they'll give us an extension, so we can salvage more of it.

[dcb]

Was it your giant boot that made this hole?




Seriously though, I'm sure I'm not the only one who is saying wtf is the deal with the house? Did flops have their way with it? Or did a tornado bounce off of it or what?

[Christ]

Bank repo'd it with about $4000 in payments left. It's a deal where the person was trying to renovate while living there, but the place should have been condemned from day one. The bank got more than their money's worth from the guy making the payments, he missed one by a few days, they repo'd the house, sold it to the church next door, who is going to level it and make a parking lot, without regard to waste of usable materials or environmental issues with "plowing it under". They do want the siding, though... another chance to make some money.

The church bought the house/land (postage stamp yard) from the bank for $10,000, then sold a contract to my friend for $300 to "salvage what he could". I wasn't informed that I should go down and get on it until just a couple weeks ago... he's started a full time job and hasn't been able to make it down there, and the kids that he hired to do the job took all the easy money (copper wiring, etc.) and flaked on him. They burned the wiring off right there in the driveway.