Summer of Construction - June 2-3, 2007

Travis came out on this Saturday afternoon to remove the large tan shed. He arrived shortly after lunch and carefully and slowly started removing nails and taking the walls apart.

His first task was to saw the roof in half and remove it. He and I were both surprised to discover the walls had two layers of sheetrock in them, making each one particularly heavy.

We both wondered if the prevous owner had lived through a tornado or something as he built this shed way too sturdy. I also heard him mumble a number of times, had he known how heavy they were, he wouldn't have taken the shed. His buddy came out in late afternoon and helped him load the walls and they were able to leave around 9 PM, quickly heading for the closest tavern I'm sure.

Here you can see the area with the shed now gone and only the little brown shed under the deck. He didn't damage the concrete floor, so it will become the landing for the stairs on my new deck which will be moved to the other side.

Sunday afternoon the other bargain hunters arrived. A motley crew of two high school age boys with nose & eyebrow rings anxious to use a borrowed electric saw on anything that they had permission to cut, a woman well into her 40's but trying to pass for high school age, her boyfriend who didn't speak much at all, and a very large friend who could have passed for Andre the Giant. I wasn't watching them closely at first, until I looked out the window and realized they had somehow managed to drive a trailer and pickup inside my yard and were now having difficulty getting all out the yard again without knocking over the the utility boxes. So I quickly went out back and guarded the utility boxes with my body at times, and tried to gently motivate them through quarrels and give suggestions on how to maneuver everything out. At one point the large man got so angry and frustrated that he stomped off to the west into the field yelling and screaming. We all just looked at each other and kept quiet, not one of us offered to go after him, but it was his truck so we just had to wait for him to cool down. He stopped yelling, came back and quietly and slowly moved all out the yard and took off quickly with the trailer and shed rocking down the road. That is the most nervous I'd been so far, and decided the rest of the project would be easy compared to that afternoon.

The only picture I dared to take was after they were all gone. All that is left is to remove the existing deck and start the new construction.