Stage 1: Demolition

Demo started the day we got the keys. Not wasting any time, we went straight to work that night, demoing the main family room area including an unsightly wood burning stove that some genius in the 80s thought would be 'cool' to install - Cockamamie!

While Craig handled the tough stuff like ripping out the wood burning stove and busting up the tile, I handled the "novice" tasks of ripping off trim and plugging in new air fresheners to improve our quality of life. The next couple days were even more exciting and included removing the entire deck (Craig), ripping off old fake wood paneling, doors and frames (me) on Friday and tearing off the siding and hacking through enough bamboo to feed all the pandas left in the world (team effort) on Saturday.

Sunday proved to be the most exciting of all, and on multiple occasions almost drove me to throw in the towel on this whole project. As you can see in the pics, Craig - decked out in head-to-toe Tyvek - crawled under the house to clean out all the insulation and debris (which included a couple shoes, old newspapers, liquor bottles and an authentic arrow bow). Going around the house bagging up the insulation left me itchy and crabby and dreaming of the days when we're working on things like choosing paint colors and tiling the bathrooms (you know, things that don't include fiberglass, huge spiders and rat poop on steroids (see video below for details)).But the work for the day wasn't over yet. Craig plowed ahead and continued to jackhammer the entire front porch while surely making lots of new friends in our neighborhood who had trouble hearing for the next few days.

This past week - our first full week in the house - I was in San Francisco for work, leaving Craig to his own devices for continuing the demo and prepping the house for the impending foundation work which should kick-off this upcoming week. I felt bad that he was working alone everyday, but during his demo he found the 2004 Women of Playboy calendar in one of the cabinets so I think he was OK.