The last wall standing. At the end of the first day of demolition, this is what remains of the old garage. The apparent haze is due to the camera fogging up when brought outside to the hot and humid conditions.
I now know what it takes to demolish and remove a garage: three strong guys, two days, two dumpsters. The garage/workshop project began in earnest this week and the first order of business was to remove the existing structure.
A tight choreography was initiated. A dumpster was delivered early Monday morning. The deconstruction crew showed up shortly after, and began disassembling, chopping, prying, sawing, hacking, and dismantling, gradually demolishing the old wood and stucco structure. By midday the roof had been eaten away. Two hours later, a single wall was still standing, wavering in the breeze.
It was the hottest day of the summer, 95/95, degrees matching percent humidity. It seemed not to matter to these men, they made it just another day on the job. They were experienced; a cooler of water and a giant bag of ice kept them semi-hydrated. The conditions took their toll however: they decided to call it a day an hour early, though it might have been because they had already overfilled the dumpster.
The demolition choreography called for a dumpster exchange the next morning. But sometimes dancers miss their cues, in this case “late morning” turned into afternoon, and the demolition was detained. On this second day, the concrete slab was to be removed. This involved repeated high-energy impacts with a sledgehammer to break it up into chunks manageable only by extremely strong men and superheros. I imagined doing this level of work and estimated my exhaustion limit at about 5 to 10 minutes. These guys lasted all day. I joked with them about their lack of need to visit the gym, but was informed that this was what they were planning to do after they got off work!
The missed dumpster cue and its non-delivery didn’t slow them down. The giant concrete chunks were hurled onto the top of the wooden debris pile in the already-full dumpster and simply compressed it.
Eventually the dumpster reached its legal limits. And then at last, it was exchanged for an empty one. Now the remainder of the concrete could be tossed into the new bin (as if tossing concrete were a casual sport).
At the end of the second day, no remnant of the original garage remained. The foundation, a single course of concrete block (floating far above the frost line), had been removed. A shallow square of sand, an inadequate base for the previous garage floor, was visible within its outline.
The choreography continues. A section of asphalt is to be cut away and removed. The excess is destined for the dumpster, but this must be done before the dumpster is removed, which must happen before the excavators arrive to dig the trench for the new foundation (which will meet the frost line). Oh, and the tree trimmers, scheduled to perform their work while there is access to the large hackberry tree that is compromising the power lines, needs to get their equipment in between all of these other activities.
Construction projects are never dull.