Day Seven

The panel disassembly started today! The wall panels that made up the garage were removed, leaving an open concrete space where the garage previously stood. The panels were taken down one by one, and had to be detached from bolts that came up from the concrete slab on which the entire house sits. There is also an angle-iron sill that runs around the edge of the concrete, on which the panels sit. It had been very badly corroded, and will not be able to be saved. In some cases it had to be sawed off of the wall panels. The workers also sawed through some of the bolts running from the concrete slab, through the metal sill, and into the wall panels.

The removal of the steel cornice pieces revealed some wooden blocking above the metal crosspieces in the roof. The ends of the metal roofing pieces are angled in, preventing them from coming into direct contact with the cornice. This was done to stop conduction from one piece of metal to another. Because the two metal pieces don’t touch cold will not be able to flow as easily from the roof into the house, making the inside much easier to heat in winter.

One surprise in the disassembly so far is the amount of wood in the house. The inside of the garage door was reinforced with wooden studs within the wall panels, and there was all the wood along the top of the house that had previously been hidden under the cornices.

Some of the interior wall panels were also removed today. They came off relatively easily, and were all labeled and laid out on the lawn opposite the house. The insulation inside was bagged and placed in the dumpster as they went along.

It’s exciting to see the deconstruction of the actual walls begin and see Rusty begin to come apart!