Storm clouds gathering over the old house. Maybe an omen of what's coming for it.

Giant vacuum I made for the attic insulation.

I fashioned it out of the city garbage can, my mini shop vac, thick plastic, a very long dryer vent hose and of course, duct tape. It worked beautifully!

yours truly in the clean and well vacuumed attic.

All clean. Check out the old electrical insulators.

Interior just as demolition began. We are going to try and salvage that nice wood floor. It's all clear Douglas fir.

Hey, wait a minute, there aren't any studs in this wall!

Kitchen.

Living room

Detail of original wall paper header

Detail of the front porch column.

Now there is a big pile of debris in my yard

Old heating duct I think. This was hidden by a large built-in shelf.

The side looking rather demoed.

As it looked with no stucco, perhaps back in the 30's.

View out our door. You can see the neighbor is doing his house too coincidentally.

The side with a big pile of roofing debris.

One of several roll-off's. I think we got 4 total. By the way, they totally gauge you for those things. It's $350 to get it and $45 a ton to dump.

My friend and contractor Rob surveys the damage and what could be salvaged.  After a mini panic attack on both our parts, we decided to fix the foundation first and do it right by taking the old out and putting in a new one.

Half the roof is off.  The demo guy we used wielded his chainsaw like a magician up there!  He stood up there and sort of rode the roof down as it fell on top of the roof joists.

Guess that window was a little wide so they just cut the stud and moved it over. Notice that the top plate is only a single 2x3.  The other side has two on top of each other.

AJ in the basement sweeping up.

The spots are dust particles reflecting the flash. That's AJ with Rob in the background, both are good friend and highly skilled as contractors.

View from our front door.

The roof is off!

Just a box now.  Like a giant load lifted from our shoulders, this house is now down to the bare minimum necessary in order to proceed as a remodel.

Corner post that is typically load bearing. Notice the poor construction under the facade.

View from our front door. The house is lit up in a sunset.

Hey, where'd our laundry room go?!

Yet another big pile for yet another roll-off.

Heating vent from the basement.

A detail of a knot in the wall board.

Detail of a print on some wall paper.  I wish I would have saved some of these things.  Oh well, at least I got pictures.

View out back from what was the kitchen.

Then, disaster struck! It rained in late April. Rain this time of the year is unheard of here in SLO.

I quickly put together a drainage system.

All the runoff from the house drained into this pipe through a large hole in the floor once used by the heating system.

Plastic, blue tarps, plywood, staples, nails and of course, duct tape were used to create this drainage device.

It worked perfectly.

And then a cool rainbow appeared after 2 days of rain.

Sun glinting through the remaining framing, two side walls down to just studs if you can call them that.

Soon, we will be enjoying the sunsets from our new back patio.

Standing in the house looking towards the street and terrace hill.

Load bearing front corner built very poorly.