We didn’t think to grab the camera and get some photos of the ugliness that was our old garage. Normally the boys take photos of their builds but photographing demolitions isn’t the norm. By the time we remembered to take photos the roof was already off of the garage. We managed to snap this one of the back before the battery ran out on the camera.

L pounding out what remains of the roof. Not sure where everyone else is…

It looked much worse from the front than the back. While the shingles covering the back were painted white, the ones covering the sides and front were a faded grey. That’s right – 50 year old shingles covered all four sides of the garage. The roof were hideous red shingles that were curling up everywhere. The door was a dented burgundy monstrosity. Anyone who has seen it has no doubt why I’d dubbed it the ugliest garage in Edmonton.

Since we had the flat bed trailer in the yard already the boys decided to take down the garage in segments and pile it onto the flat bed to take to the dump. As they took the parts down, they placed them onto the trailer. What didn’t fit ended up in a pile in the middle of the old garage pad.

T (L’s son), contractor R, Drew, J and L surveying the remains of the garage.

Before they began tearing down the garage, the boys gerry-rigged a new fence to keep our dogs in. L devised a way to put up our old gate so we could continue to access the back alley from our backyard. He figured since we’d be a small construction zone for a few weeks we should make the temporary fence and gates as strong as possible. There’s a good view of L’s handiwork in the photo below.

J, T, contractor R, and L

While they didn’t end up salvaging as much as they could have, the boys did make a large pile of wood to chop up for firewood and a secondary pile of wood that L wanted to use for carpentry projects. Aside from woodsheds and flower pots, L’s been making accent tables for people in the neighbourhood in his spare time. L cut up a chunk of the wood and all of the neighbourhood firewood stores were filled. After overloading E&V’s, contractor R’s, and our woodsheds they filled 3/4 of the back of T’s truck. Apparently there’s still more they need to cut up and distribute.

The morning after.

When the boys headed off to the dump on Sunday morning to drop off the first load of detritus, I toddled into the alley to take photos of the remaining demo pile and old garage pad.

All gone.

It rained poured all day on Sunday and the ground was just too wet for the boys to dig out the sides and start cribbing. Sure, if we’d hired them they’d have worked with minimal complaint. Since the labour was all working for food and drinks we didn’t expect them to work during the downpours. It would have been silly to expect anyone to work during thunderstorms when we could all hide out in L&J’s garage across the alley and play darts.

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