Old Fireplace Mantel pulled away from the wall. (Didn't find any notes from George Washington!)
Leaded Glass over Front Door
One of the Old Six Panel Doors that I saved
Door Knobs and Shower Handles for Future Coat/Towel Racks
Flashback – Ready to Demo
Once we filed the demo application we had to put a sign up
notifying folks of our intent to take down the house as well as wait for 10
days before receiving the green light to take it down. I guess the purpose of
that is to provide anybody that had a reason for it not to be taken down to put
a hold on it. We weren’t sure what that might entail if somebody did protest so
we held our breath for the ten days.
During that time, I went in and removed as many of the
reusable items as possible. One of the best items that I saved was the
fireplace mantel which I was able to gingerly pry away from the wall without
out destroying it. Another was the leaded glass window over the front door. It
took about two hours to deconstruct the frame around it (I had tried to save it
first) and gently pull it away without breaking it. I don’t know how I did it
but it came away in one piece.
I saved a couple of the original pine, six panel doors along
with their molding. I also removed all of the glass doorknobs and their
locksets from the other doors. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the locksets but
I’m going to use the door knobs to create a coat rack with the knobs as
hangers. I saved door casings to mount the knobs to.
I was also able to
retrieve about a dozen window weights from the old windows. Not sure what I’m
going to do with them but we always had them around as a kid so I figured why
not? I had to open the walls to take them out. I saved three of the kitchen
windows which were fairly new Andersens. Two of them are the awning type which
I’m going to put in the shed that we had built. Not sure what I’ll do with the
third but it was too good to throw in a dumpster. When I was taking out the
kitchen windows I found that the wall was saturated with live carpenter ants
which had eaten through most of the framing around the window. I’m not sure why
they didn’t fix the issue when they replaced the windows. If we had rehabbed,
this would have been one of those expensive surprises that seem to pop up and
we would have had to rebuild the wall.
I was able to find good homes for most of the other doors
using Craigslist and gave them away to those that answered the ad. It was nice
to know that others would get good use out of them as they were nice, solid
doors.
The ten day waiting period went by and no one filed any
objection, so we finally had the demo permit in hand. Now, the project had a
life and we could get started. And we were ready. Sixteen months ago...
