Begone! Before Someone Drops a Blumpf on You Too!

The blumpf has come down - fortunately, no wicked witches were killed in the process.

Demolition is an interesting process.  When dismantling other people's work, one gets to see what a good job they did - or what lousy construction some people do.

In the case of the blumpf (the old back room on the Rockhead and Quarry shop), it was definitely the latter.  As we started dismantling the blumpf, we found that water had gotten into most of the walls, and there was a lot of damage, dry rot, termites and mold.  The blumpf had also been constructed so some of the wood actually sat on the dirt - the foundation was not very well executed, and the slab was mostly inside the walls.  The walls were rotting from the top down because of water leaking in, and from the bottom up because the blumpf was sitting directly on the dirt.  So taking the blumpf off was not only necessary for this project, it would have had to be removed even if we wanted to keep that room.

So we tore out all the rotting wallboard and removed the windows.  Then we started taking off the siding, exposing the original studs.

The blumpf with the siding removed

After that, we went up on the roof and disconnected the roof from the old building.  It took a lot of prying and cutting, but eventually, the blumpf came free.

We then knocked the blocking out of the two side walls, which made them unstable.  We left the blocking in the back wall, to keep it steady, so the blumpf would fall straight back.  

Once we had pried the blumpf free, we tied a rope around the back wall, and we started pulling.  Within seconds, the blumpf started leaning toward us, and then, with a loud crash, hit the ground.  

Tom, post blumpf

The flat roof of the blumpf, with the wall studs under it

Next, we cut up all the debris, sorting the wood to figure out what was still usable, what was junk, and putting the asphalt, the scrap wood and the metal into separate piles.  Dumps these days are picky - they want everything separated.

A pile of debris

Today, we went over and loaded all the debris into the truck, which Tom took to the dump.  The blumpf is gone, and all that is left for us to do is break up the concrete pad and haul that away.  Progress!

Nice and clean

The shop is back to its original 1916 footprint - just in time for its centennial. 

To see a brief video of the blumpf being disconnected from the building, right before we yanked it over, see below.