Friday, August 13, 2010

Unfortunate by-products

I bet I scared you with that title... after yesterday's post about bathroom demolition and exposed sheeters? Fret not, gentle reader. Today's post is about cleaning up your demolition mess.

Smashing apart walls, ripping up flooring, dismantling trapdoors and rebuilding floor joists all generate a considerable amount of waste. I spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon whacking nails out of boards. It's very cathartic, whacking stubborn things with a hammer. It's probably just as well that I don't have a hammer at work.

I had a good system in place. Or rather, Dad put a good system in place which I adopted and ran away with.

This is the pile of boards with nails in them (already greatly diminished as I didn't think to photograph this undertaking at the outset). Not shown: spriggly little poison ivy plants growing along the edge of the cottage wall.

I took a board down, and whacked the nails out (or in some instances removed the screws).

Nails got flung onto the blue mat. Some might have landed in the grass nearby. Probably not a good idea to walk barefoot around the back door for the next little while. If the poison ivy doesn't get you, the rusty nails will!

"Clean" boards got leaned up on this side of the cottage for later re-use either as construction material or bonfire fuel.

We've been building some good bonfires trying to stay ahead of all the junk we're generating. As the captain puts it, "White man build big fire, stand waaaayyy back."

Our neighbour Doug jokingly asked us why we spent all that money on a cottage only to rip it apart and burn it. It does sound a bit absurd, when you put it that way. But I know that every bit burnt makes the lodge that much nicer.

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