Salvaging Parts of The House

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...