When we last did a major kitchen remodel, back in 2004, I thought we might take all the construction debris to the dump ourselves. I don't remember why this seemed like a good idea. It's likely that I didn't realize how much construction debris a complete remodel would generate. When the contractor told me he noticed a colony of rats making themselves comfortable, I hired someone to come and haul away the garbage. Was it less money than the dumpster we had for the bathroom remodel a year earlier? Probably not much less.
When we started the demo on this house, we tossed the materials off the back deck. We live in a wooded area, with no lawn either in the front or back. Our neighbors on both sides use their houses as vacation homes, we we didn't worry about offending them with our construction debris (but we did apologize when we saw them mid-summer). Along the way, we did wonder if we should rent a dumpster sooner rather than later--would a whole house remodel generate 2 dumpsters full of construction debris?
A few weeks ago, we decided we had enough for one dumpster, and soon it would be cold--time to get a dumpster and load it up. A week ago, our dumpster arrived, and it sat empty for a few days while my spouse strategized how to get everything inside. He knew it would take careful placement to get it all in. He went so far as to organize the construction debris by size in the back yard.
I got home late Thursday afternoon, after hearing weather reports of coming rain and wind overnight. I changed into work clothes, and between the two of us, we got most of the dumpster loaded Thursday night by sunset. On Friday morning, the rain and wind had yet to appear, so we loaded the smaller stuff into construction bags. My spouse got the last pieces of paneling out of the loft. We discovered this wasp nest in the wall:
Actually, that's only half the nest. And happily, it was an empty nest. We wondered why it had been left in the wall. I thought maybe the wasps lived in it, got tired of it, and moved to somewhere better (much like we did). But my spouse could see that it had been treated. I probably would have left it alone too--why rip out the wall, particularly for a vacation home? We're the first people in this house who are living here year round.
We've done many more remodels than most people, and I reflected on all the things we've found in old houses. My favorite was a 1960's booklet from the U.S. Government that told people how to survive a nuclear war; we found it in the attic of our house in Goose Creek, SC. We've found old photos and small toys (not classic toys, but the plastic kinds of junk that come with Happy Meals). We've found all sorts of trash. We've found traces of rodents and traps. But we've never found such a large wasp's nest.
We've stripped our current house to the studs for most walls, and we've replaced all the windows and the three sliding glass doors on the back wall. This house is in better shape than any other house we've owned (one in Summerville, SC, one in Goose Creek, SC and two in Hollywood, FL). We've ripped out the kitchen and most of two bathrooms. Here's what the dumpster looked like:
The dumpster should be out of our driveway today--hurrah!
We've still got lots to do on the inside--lots of drywall, for example. How I hate the drywall process. But it feels like progress to get our back yard back:
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