Little house demo

Darren Wright

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I spent the afternoon tearing down the lean to off the little house. The lean to was her grandpa’s tractor shed. He opened up the front of the house, filled in the crawl space on that side, and poured a concrete slab to park his car in it.

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In case you were wondering why the little house is coming down.
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I was able to use the support posts of the lean to and some oak planks to make a place to hang my post hole digger. Should make it easier to attach/detach on the tractor.
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That is the plan, but don’t underestimate how well the metal roof on the south side is going to hold things together. I’m just hoping it will come down enough to make it less of a hazard to work on.

Edit: I should explain, the south side got a metal roof 10 or so years back, but the north side never did, which was a cause for the collapse. There is also about a foot and a half of the hillside built up on the north wall too, which caused it to rot out also.
 
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I would bet on the screws pulling out when you give it a bit of pressure.. but that may be a optimistic thought.

There may be some shear strength left in the siding as well, it's hard to tell. How much of a problem that is also depends on how well..or if..it's attached to the sill plate.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes anyway.

Nice looking day for it as well (y)
 
All the boards from the lean too were chopped to wood boiler length tonight. I saved a few boards out of the whole lot, but had several 2x4 and 2x8 oak boards, all had some rot or powder post beetle damage. The siding pieces on the back wall turned out to be walnut. They were really light and filled with beetle damage and dry rot on the back side. I first thought they were poplar, but not seen powder post damage and dry rot in poplar very often, so know why now.

I have a face cord of lumber to burn now. It’s going to be cold a few days, so going to need it. I also picked a dozen or so large limbs washed up in the field from the last flood, which got added to the pile.
 
Well, as somewhat expected, it didn't go without a fight, and it's still fighting.

It took me 4 different pulls to get the majority to fall. There were a heck of a lot of nails used on it. I started with the corner it was leaning to first, but one chain slipped and only got the corner, not the other side of the large opening. So next pulled it and the section between it and the window. Still no big kaboom. :huh:
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Next pulled out the corner, which it did not come without a fight. Took all 7500#s of my F250 and 4x4 to get it to pull. Still no Kaboom...

Lastly I wrapped the window openings on the side where I removed the lean-to. Still nothing spectacular, but it got the front half of the roof down.

It was at this point I decided to just work on clean up of what was down and safe to remove. I was able to use the forks on the front end loader to drop some of the metal roof safely and break up some sections a bit more. We've got the flatbed trailer full of 2x4 and siding material from the front and side of the house. I cleaned up the yard and plan to tackle the back section of the roof with the forks when I get more of the materials out of the way.

We did get some video of each pull, but will need to edit it all together.

Here is where it sits this evening.
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I remember as a little kid (4 or 5) we moved to the house we all grew up in. There was an old one car garage with a severe "list" to it. We were not allowed around or in it. Dad and Unc brought both wreckers home one night and they thought it a five minute job. That old garage fought them every inch of the way. I made an impression on me for sure. Was thinking of that battle when you started discussing the job. Fire Department came and burnt our garage pile then.
 
We considered just burning it, but there is a lot of brush and leaves. Also there are several large trees that would be affected by the heat. So just decided that it will be taken down the hard way. I do have a brush pile that will get burned, so have some large chunks that I’ll add with the tractor forks to it.
 
I wrote a bit of an explanation of very specifically how to do that properly, which definitively does not involve every ones favorite but utilized somewhat more specifically targeted action at control points, plus a bit of "excited pushing" at key points with appropriate delays. Finesse will get you a long ways in a short time even if it scares the neighbors less.

But I elided it on reflection of my better judgement as it would still require some common sense and a certain amount of foreknowledge I'm suspecting most folks lack one or the other or often both based on historical observations (and it involved a handful of things you'd have to get appropriate licensing for anyway).

I wouldn't touch confined Tannerite with a two thousand foot pole for this sort of thing... There's a long list of reasons, but any single one of them would be enough to put the kibosh on the concept. Unconfined as a target, in moderate amounts, where it won't catch things on fire, and there's no fools around doing foolish things, it is of course fine.

I've generally become more cautious with such things as I've gotten older and wiser given the apparent surplus of fools that somehow seem to magically appear when such compounds are involved.

I have a second cousin who spent quite a few years running a large building demolition business in Vegas.. now HE has some good stories haha.
 
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