When the walls came down...

The demo job has been long and hard. Our guy, Louis, is our demolition guy. He's the one leading the charge in stripping our new home back to its bones and prepping it for the contractors to come in and begin the work of rebuilding and restoring.

Louis

Louis is patient, careful. He strips back only what's needed while keeping all the wiring and potential trouble walls intact. It can be easy to demo, but it takes real skill to do it without destroying your home in the process.

And to be honest, at times it feels like we're just destroying our brand new home. Here's a view of our upstairs floor as it looks today:

View from Jada's room, through the master ensuite into the master bedroom.

That's after the rubble has been cleared out. Two weekends ago, we cleared out over 5 tons of rubble! That's 2 guys hauling over 5 tons over a 2 day period. With 2 garbage cans. Is that even possible?

Things have moved quickly and we're getting more and more excited. It's going to be a beautiful home. Here's our upstairs bath before the demo:

And after:

And there are other less destructive changes that have happened too! The flashing was redone on our building to fill some leaks. The flashing runs along the top of the house, capping the bricks. The old flashing was black, but we went with silver for the upgrade. To match our attached neighbour:

Old black flashing

New improved silver flashing

We also had a small army of guys attack the side of our house to do repairs on the brick work. It needed repointing with some plates added to ensure it doesn't weaken over the next 5 years. 

Scaffolding for the job

These guys flew in like a hornet's nest, attacking the bricks. That green netting you see in the photo above was meant to keep the dust in while they worked. I had no idea just how much dust there could be, but without a doubt we announced our intentions to the entire neighbourhood as a massive red cloud wafted across every lawn. I scrambled to make sure everyone knew what was up. No sense stirring the natives unnecessarily, but everyone took it pretty well....most everyone. We had only one grumble, but what can I say. Renos are messy.

One of the plates added, painted a matching colour. 7 plates in total.

And the finished job. Hard to tell from the picture, but they did a fantastic job.

It's exciting to see things happening already. Not just dust and demo, but progress...our home's taking shape. One baby step at a time.