Demolition: Is it worth it?

Welcome to the first in a series of “Is It Worth It?” posts on Don and Amy’s Basement Reno blog, where I take each of the tasks we tackled over the course of our renovation, and describe the trials and tribulations we encountered and conclude whether it’s worth doing yourself or if you should just hire someone to do it for you.

You know, if you were ever foolish, wealthy, AND bored enough to want to try something like this yourself.

And yes, I stole the idea from Canada’s Worst Handyman. Good show. But we're going to Seattle to catch one last baseball game this weekend and I won't have much else to post, so this is what you get.

First up: demolition!

Our experience

As I’m sure you remember, our demolition came about in multiple stages. The majority of it went fairly smoothly, and we didn’t actually destroy anything we didn’t mean to. The only injury incurred was a bruised eye socket thanks to a stubborn nail and a certain lapse in concentration when switching between dust mask and eye gogglers.

The advantage for us in doing the demo ourselves was the whole multiple stages thing. We actually needed to frame in parts of the office and bathroom before we could start moving other things to get to the rest of the bits we needed to demolish. If we had hired somebody to this, we would have had to ask them to come back several times, which probably would have cost more.

Pros:
Let’s face it, demolition is kind of a no-brainer: see wall, smash wall, done. Of all the tasks involved, demo certainly requires the least amount of brain power and - surprisingly – relatively little brute strength, once the concept of leverage comes into play. Not only that, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Cons:
The potential for injury and/or tetanus is fairly high, it’s generally very dirty, and once the fun of all the smashy-smashy is over, there’s quite a bit of clean-up involved.

Is It Worth It?
In a word: absolutely. Just remember to wear your eye gogglers, kids, and invest in a pair of decent gloves and a Magic Bar or two. Oh, and I highly recommend hiring someone to take the trash away for you as we did. Saves a lot of time and, believe it or not, money. We’ve gone with 1-800-GOT-JUNK on more than a couple of occasions, and they’ve been consistently great.

Next time: digging your own drainage ditches for fun and profit! Or not!