Timberrr!

Our house came complete with an ugly (and dangerous) eyesore on the front right side, in the form of an addition that kind of hung off the house like a bird's nest. Exhibit A, in the red circle:

We discovered that it was sitting on just a couple 4x4s and one 6x6 post, and the floor joists were not really joists at all, but instead were pieces of metal shelving! I am not kidding, and I am sure the previous owner did not have a permit to build this abomination that he evidently called a family room. With its obvious flaws, we figured it would fall right off with little coaxing. HA!

Beginning the day of the Demolition Party, we started disassembling it and carefully knocking out the posts underneath, one by one, with the hope it would start to collapse. No such luck. We even had all S's former football teammates try to pull it off with a giant rope. Again, no such luck.

Eventually, S took a giant sledgehammer and knocked all the support posts and possible mainstays out from underneath it except for that single 6x6. This process made me very nervous, but still the stalwart beast wouldn't budge. Then he started notching the post to weaken it so that we could pull it from a distance. More nervousness, and still no collapse. Eventually it came to this--S and his dad with a ratchet strap, and me and my dad standing clear:

Much grunting and heaving later, the moment we've all been waiting for arrives.......

......and I am sad to report that it was a bit anticlimactic. We were hoping for utter decimation and loud crashes, but the thing just basically creaked its way down. S's dad eventually borrowed a friend's tractor and yanked the rest of it off. Basically the only thing holding it up was the siding! It was a mess to say the least, and it took a few days of intense labor to haul it all to the dumpster. Even though we didn't get the big bang we were hoping for, we and our house can finally breathe!