First thing that went was the old back porch and the shed roof that covered the old basement access. These had been built as temporaries during the last phase of the renovation and were starting to fall aparat (they had only been designed to last a few years, so that was to be expected). Little did we know that day going to work was the last time we'd ever use that door (boo hoo).

Just another view of the back withput the porch

Better view of the soon to be gone south basement wall. You can see where the steps used to be.

Just a little more detail on the corner (east corner)

Shot of the big new hole covered with a tarp (and a little light snow)

Here is the South West footing for the new basement walls. I missed a chance to take a pic of the big hole -- they almost immediatly tarped it up. So that means all of the early basement photos are going to be 1) tight in scale and 2) dark and blue tinted.

South Footing. The jog in is because the back door is actually set into the house a bit and as such, the foundation wall has to come in too.

This is after the basement wall was removed. The big pile in the foreground is old basement block. Right behind that, you can see the old basement door. The wall was in such lousy shape they found water 4 feet up in the columns inside the block. That was a disaster in slow motion that I'm already feeling better about.

This is the "trench" used to gain access to the pitt.

The old wall is removed, but because it's so cold, the contractors put up a plywood wall (actually, two sides of plywood) and plastic on the inside. Too bad because I would have loved to seen the house just floating over air. There is a center support holding the house up (fortunatly, the south wall was not one of the major load bearing walls).

Another view, showing he missing wall and the footings for the new basement walls.

The interior of the basement. Other side of the plywood wall and plastic all in a moderately successful ploy to keep the house at above-freezing temps.

Another shot of the plastic. You can also see the steel beam holding the main center beam of the house up

And more plastic...

Since we're losing the kitchen for a few months, the laundry room has been pressed into service. Most of what was in here is now in the garage, The dryer is hwere it is because it used to be against the now missing south basement wall. Microwave, hot plate, two pans, 4 plates and a lot of take-out in our future.

The kitchen partially demoed. Get a look at the colors on the walls near the corner -- pink and blue. Must have been beautiful in there (ugh).

Behind the fridge (in it's temporary home) is yet another color the kitchen used to be -- a sort fo sage greeen. Bet that looked great with the pink and blue (and based on other walls we've seen in this place, I would not be surprised if the kitchen was all three colors at the same time).

Now the real demolition. One cool thing is there appears to have been a wall scone in the dinign room at one time (look carefully near the center of the picture to see where the hole was plugged and the back-bar that used to hold the sconces electrical box).

Note the tile floor -- it's not long for this world and there is some wild and ugly stuff under it.

The new kitchen door is framed. Actually, part of it is framed -- this door is acutally much larger than the final door will be, But since we don't need it to be smaller yet, the idea is to leave it like this until we get a bit further into framing. Note: the new "edge" is to the right and the old door edge is to the left.

Here you can see (in the corner) where the old door to the basement used to be. In the last major renovation, we switched that around toward the dining room (where it is today and will remain)

Eghads! What an awful shade of green. Sometimes I feel bad that a lot of the houses original character was lost in the 70s. And then there are things like this and the kitchen colors we unearthed that make me think perhaps losing them wasn't such a bad idea.

Since the ast wall of the kitchen is going to bump out, they carefully removed the existing clapboards. The downside is there is now only boards and 2x4s between the inside and outside and those boards are not very tight (you can easily see sunlight through them).

The kitchen floor -- long hidden under the tile floor. There are at least three different floors here. The majority of the floor is a green lineoleum which is actually not half bad. The pink is paint tounge&goove oak flooring (such a shame). Finally, hard to see, but in the upper left conrer, near the shovel, is yet another sort of flooring -- probably lineoleum too.

The snazzy dust shield put between the kitchen/basement doors and the rest of the house. Here we can just see Mark doing hsi "Boy in the Plastic Bubble" immitation.

Some demo in the existing bathroom -- the window is gone forever, so they have blocked it up (most of this space will actually be a closet when we are done).

With the old bedroom floring and subfloor removed, we can see that 1) it's pretty clean under there and 2) all the wiring I did for the first floor bathroom and hall way is exposed.

You can see some new wood in the wall in the left part of the picture. Originally, this was the front part of a larger bedroom. The door to this room is about in the correct place, but there was no door where the existing bathroom is. At some point. Where the "new wood" is used to be a door to the back part of the room. At some point, thus was blocked in and a new door cut to split the bedroom into a kitchen/bathroom combo (when the second floor used to be an apartment).

Unfotunatly, that sewer stack is pretty much exactly where the door to the new closet goes. Ugh -- cast iron is not fun stuf to deinstall.