Today we removed the back porch of the house. The back porch has been a problem from the get go. It was installed at some time after the house was constructed and done pretty poorly. By the time we bought the house, water leakage and an accompanying hoard of carpenter ants had already started destroying it. Being new buyers and having the worst of it hidden by ceiling tiles, we didn't know until it was too late.
We had decided as much as two years that the porch would have to go. However, there is a basement access that would then be exposed to the outside world (and act as a big rain basin) that always stopped us. We had considered removing the porch and putting a smaller, more appropriate porch on the house. Later, we decided to re-use the space at the back of the house as an "extension" to the house.
By early 2000, the porch had numerous holes in the ceiling 1 foot wide or larger and was a death trap. As soon as it got nice, we rented a dumpster and down she came.
Unfortunately, the day we picked decided to do a reprise of winter. After a month of moderate temps, we had snow in the morning (only about an inch, but) and pretty cold temps. But, the dumpster was here and we were paying for it, so....
The back porch looked a lot like this before we started. This is actually about an hour into the project and the windows and door had been removed. We had forgotten to get a completely "pre-demo" picture
First thing to go was the roof. It was also the most dangerous because it was falling apart, soaked with water and had virtually nothing but the paint and the odd electrical wiring holding it up. It was the worst pat of the whole day. Water pouring in from the roof, the roof itself coming down like wet shredded wheat. It had the structural integrity of soaked tissue paper (very very heavy tissue paper).
Here from the inside 
Once the roof was off, it we decided to take the south facing wall down (the largest wall). This didn't take nearly as much work. Especially since with a few well placed cuts, the thing could just be pushed over (the wood at the base was soo rotten).
Next to go was the east facing wall (the wall that faces the park). This was a little trickier, but basically pretty easy. Most of our time now was cutting away support (this wall, as with the west one, was considerably less rotted and actually required work) and chopping things up for the dumpster. Notice the sky looks nicer here - the day got progressively better.
Next to go (cleverly enough) was the west wall. This one took a bit more care because there is a window and more of the house past it and we didn't want to damage them. With this gone, the structure was basically gone (yeah!), though the porch stage/deck remained
Removing the deck was a contentious decision. As it stood, it was pretty rotted and without the walls, it was pretty flimsy. However, it was also "open" to people (before we had locked the door to the back porch and forbade anyone using it), had no railings and was a death trap. Removing it meant that we'd have poor/no access to our back doors though (because of the height and the chasm of a stairwell to the basement. In the end, we decided to get rid of it and work around the access issues for a few months.
Well, that's it. The weather wasn't perfect, but not bad. No one got killed or even really hurt (we don't think either of us shed a drop of blood). We have to put up a temporary gutter, but we believe that should take care of the major exterior work until the contractors show up.