REMOVING THE DECK

While we cleaned up the front, Dad was getting things ready to demo the deck back on the East side. Without any type of cover, the deck took a beating from the sun and rain. We got 7 years out of a 5/4" treated pine deck but it now needs replacing. We decided to keep the structure and find a new decking material that would last a little longer.
We have looked into several options and now realize that the southeast U.S. has an abundance of trees but none of them are appropriate for exterior decking without the aid of modern chemistry. The West coast has Redwood, South America has Ipe and Garapa and Australia has Ironwood and Eucalyptus. (BTW, if you have never seen Garapa take a look, the stuff is beautiful!) I recently came across a product call Timbersil. It's made from SYP infused with glass to create a durable, non-toxic and non-corrosive material that is guaranteed to last 40 years. We will continue to look into this so stay tuned.

Steve decided to skip a beautiful day at his new beach home and join us for a little manual labor.
He and my dad are getting ready to open up the last wall that separates the old house from the new. As you can see all the wiring is being saved so some of this work was more like surgery than demolition.
The front room is opening up...

Meanwhile, on the West side of the house the interior walls were all coming down. The picture above is from the new entry looking back into the existing house. The one below is looking into the new space. We had some last minute design changes after we removed all the walls and spent that evening redesigning interiors in this area.

The exterior sheathing on the original house was tongue and groove southern yellow pine. We salvaged most of this for the ceiling area back on the East side.

EAST SIDE continued..

Not only is demolition dangerous, it's messy. Everyone worked hard this weekend and we all began to see the new house take shape.
With the East wall removed we can now begin to see our new space. I can't wait to get those colored panels for glass wall above.

THE ENVELOPE IS COMPLETE

We finished glazing in the corner window above the deck. The mullions and framing were cut from stock Douglas fir boards. Most of the glass was taken from left over samples that I have been collecting over the past few years at work. We have ordered colored recycled resin panels from Lightblocks that will eventually replace 6 of the glass panels shown here. These include blue, green and red panels and should be here in a month or so. We have been saving the exterior planks from the original house and will use these to clad the ceiling over the porch.
We began removing the south east corner of the house, including the window box I built 5 years ago. It turns out that the angle I chose for the roof here was off and we hope to correct this in the new renovation. The house is actually 18-20 degrees off of true south so this window was letting in more light during the spring and fall then we anticipated.
A temporary wall was built inside the house to separate the living space from the demo area. Our small house is a lot smaller now but it's livable. It's like living inside an art installation with really good light quality.

INTERIOR DEMOLITION BEGINS

We had a lot of help today and completed the interior demolition. Tomorrow we begin framing the new walls. I'll post more pictures soon.

Stay tuned!