Wholesale Destruction

We went to Matt's parents house to knock down their porch thingy. The glass was already out of it, but there were concrete block walls and timbering to take out, as well as plastic roofing.
Safety was vital. Well, in as far as we took turns at wearing the protective helmet.

Matt started on the timbers at the back on Friday evening.

Matt and his father: "How do we get the roof to come down now we've taken out the woodwork and some of the brickwork?"
Me: "Hey, why don't we sort of pull this bit and smack it with a sledgehammer?"
It worked, too. I am a sexy, shoeless God of War.
Next morning we finished off the bit round the back.

And then we had to tackle the front. This comes up to the second storey at its peak, and the roofing was bolted onto the beams. So we went up on the roof (I know! I went on the ROOF!) to have a look from above. Turned out we could only get some of the bolts out without plummeting to our deaths, so we climbed back down.
Our technique was 'hit the wooden bits with the big sledgehammer until they catapult across the garden', which proved quite effective.

Also hauling. Lots of hauling.

Whack whack whack the timbering!

Pause for thoughtful staring. The roof, at this point, was only held on by one large beam along the top. We tried to work out how to bring it down.

Culminating in John's best idea yet. Hooray! Hit the roof with a ladder!

Then we knocked down the wall. My proudest moment - I'd been hammering away at a block, and the wall split so that a piece made up of four concrete bricks came off all in one lump. Matt and his dad were just saying that they didn't think it was going to split into individual blocks, and that we'd have to deal with it as a massive piece, when I gave it one more thump and it neatly divided into the four bricks. Muahaha. Total fluke, but still...

Matt's mum was in charge of feeding the starving troops.

And that's the culmination of our hard work - no porch thingy, and a massive pile of concrete blocks!

It was a lot of fun, and the worst injury that happened was when I was driving a wedge through the doorframe and the head flew off the small steel sledgehammer, bounced off the floor, and cracked me in the shin.
All my muscles hurt now, but it was worth it, as it seemed to kick my blues into touch, if only temporarily.