If you remember my last house update I told you that we were going to take the chimney out of the house. We opted to do that for a couple reason…
1st-We don’t need it. We took out the fuel oil furnace and put in LP. With that we don’t need a chimney.
2nd-The house has “settled” a bit in it’s age and the chimney was part of the issue. With it gone, we can address that problem.
3rd-There will never be an easier time to do it.
4th-We are still waiting for workers so why not?!?
We removed a chimney in a house years ago…I was an awful task. It took days and days and into weeks to complete. Each brick had to be carried out by hand. I just dreaded this job. We lined up a couple of our kids to help over the weekend but decided to give it a try and get a system down before they came. It wasn’t fun but not nearly as hard as I thought it might be because we could dump the brick out the upstairs window where the old basement was. The excavator operator would remove them when he dug the new basement. It was looking okay….then Hubby got an idea.
He borrowed an air hammer from a friend. We have a small portable air compressor that was able to be moved into the rooms where we needed it. Here he is working in our closet loosening bricks.
Then he’d throw the loosened bricks down the chimney. Previously he made a hole in the chimney in the basement. The bricks would fall down the chimney and land on the ground. From here Craig would scoop them up and throw them out into the place where the old basement was removed.
It made quite a pile of brick…and this wasn’t all of it.
This was amazing…I can’t believe it worked so slick. I didn’t even have to help. It was a two person job. The two of them worked from about 6pm to 9pm one night and the next night they worked for about an hour.
We couldn’t be happier with how slick the whole process went. Our next goals are to get the last of the flooring out of that old farm house and to remove the front porch…more on that to come. Hopefully we can tackle on or two of those jobs this weekend….
Pretty slick. Are you going to finish the basement for additional living space?
Can you not recycle those bricks like around the new front porch or to line a flower bed in front of the porch? I think old brick has more character than new ones and they’re free. (lol) just a thought..
I agree with Donna we took out a old chimney too and I used the bricks around flower beds. You many not need all of those but I used a lot of the ones we had around flower beds and hubby can put the mower wheel on the bricks and then no trimming later. :)
awesome
That was a great idea and very handy! Glad you are coming right along on the house!
My friend has a patio and sidewalk made out of old brick and they are stunning!!!
One thing I can say about you, besides being a great quilter is you don’t mind hard work.
What about using the bricks around a fire pit?