With the brick off all the walls, second story windows out, and the interior non-load bearing walls removed, the house was ready to get a giant haircut.  It was time to take off the entire roof!  A crane arm greeted us as we drove to the acreage the morning demo was set to start.

For the past two years, we’ve discussed plans for this house with people hundreds of times. Here’s how part of the conversation usually goes:

Me: Yeah, the house has almost 10,000 square feet. We don’t need that much space so we’re going to take off the entire second floor.

Them: Really? How?

Me: Well, we’re kind of thinking about bringing in a crane, cutting off the roof, and lifting it off.

Them: Oh… (These people are nuts!)

Even though I said it over and over to people, I still had my doubts how this was going to work.  We had explored other options, but we kept coming back to the crane option.  Thankfully, we live 15 minutes from the state’s best crane company, Dave’s Crane, in Union, IA.

Originally, the plan was for the crane to be set up on the west side of the house.  Recent rain had made that impossible without heavier equipment to move the crane through the mud.  Thankfully it found a nice (tight) fit on the driveway east of the house.

The plan was to remove the roof in three chunks. They decided to start on the north side.  Our contractor used a chainsaw to cut the walls free about a foot down from the ceiling.  It had been our hope to be able to save the second story 2×6 walls to re-purpose for a different part of the project.  The $/hour cost of the crane made it an easy choice to get things done as quick as possible.

Then the straps from the crane were wrapped around the trusses.

1, 2, 3…PULL!!! The first section was cleanly lifted up and away!

That was easy…almost too easy.

The next section to take off was the south side.  They followed the same plan by sawing around the outside and through the trusses. That part takes time, so we had left for awhile. We returned around lunch time to check on the progress.

Unfortunately, the second section had not gone as planned.  We found the crew doing more cutting on the walls. They had already tried multiple times to lift off the section but something was still hooked to the house on the southeast corner.  The straps ended up ripping through the roof and they had to try again. The roof was in sad shape.

They got it all strapped up again.  As the crane began to lift, we held our breath.  This was a moment that you start to think “If this goes wrong, how much damage will it do the house…how much will it cost to fix?!”

Well, it got up in the air! But that darn outside corner wouldn’t give. The roof suddenly collapsed and crashed down the side of the house!

OH (Expletive!)

It could have been a total disaster. Luckily the roof fell apart just right. A part of the second story wall was pushed out but that was the only damage!  It didn’t even break the first floor window below it!

With the struggle of the second section over, it was time to take the final part.  All that was left was the roof over the middle. Again, they followed the same plan to cut around the outside and lift it off. Thankfully that section came off nicely.

After all of that we now had two huge sections of roof sitting in our driveway!  And one section hanging off the south side of the house. 🙂

Once the roof was off, our contractor knocked down most of the second floor walls.

Here’s where we were after the first day of demo.

Click on the triangle below to watch the time lapse video of the whole day.

We still had more demo work to do!  Even though the roof and second story walls were gone, we needed to remove all of the floor trusses as well as the front porch and west bump out.  The crane camped out overnight.

Stay tuned for Day 2!

Till next time…

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