House RenovationsIn last week’s photos I showed how my sidewalks had been broken up and taken away, and this week, more demolition! Now that I’ve expanded the plans to add a big addition to the back of my house for an office/studio/guestroom area, the current office had to come off. I should have taken a before photo earlier in the process, but the door you see open here led into a small hall where my washer and dryer was, and to the right of the door was my previous tiny office.

The debris you see on the ground in the photo above is the remnants of a shed covering these outside stairs leading to a dirt basement where my furnace and hot water heater is. The steps will be inside the house in the new addition, with stairs lengthened and covered by a trap door in the mud-room passageway to leads out under the deck.

I had to include this debris shot so you could see the actual color of the walls from the former office, because the next shot (taken on a brighter day) makes it look like the walls were bright orange! Actually I loved this part of the house with rusty walls and bright blue accents, and I painted it myself a few years ago.

After one day of demolition, this platform is all that was left of the former office and laundry area, and my kitchen is now directly behind that piece of wood nailed to the back of the house. It’ll be a happy day when that piece of wood comes off, because I’m guessing I’ll be seriously stir-crazy by then.

It was quite an amazing pile of office pieces to find in the back yard when I came home from work! I have no idea how they tore this all off in one day, but I’m guessing that this part of the job might be kind of fun for the workers.

Another shot showing why it’s probably a very good thing that I rented the driveway from the college kids living in the house next door. What a mess to have piled up in front of your garage.

I had to include this shot in memory of the swamp cooler in the background, which cooled my house for over ten years before I had central air, partly thanks to a certain former boyfriend (he-who-shall-not-be-named) who came and fixed it for me more times than I can remember. After I got the central air, I never wanted to replace the window where the swamp cooler had been, so it hung useless on the back of the house for another ten years!

Finally, this photo is out of order chronologically, but another in-memory-of shot, this time for the beautiful oak desk that was built into my former office when my brother-in-law Kelly remodeled the office many years ago. I saved the parts of the desk and plan to use it in the new office, probably with a bit of a redesign to make a desk that wraps around a corner. Stay tuned for next weeks’ edition of house renovations which I’ll probably be calling “The Big Dig!”
(If anyone is interested, you can see my whole set of House Renovations Photos on Flickr.)

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