On our quest for tasks to tackle before Macky returns, we continued with demolition today. Our revised plans now include a built-in closet – however, this one is a bit different. The built-in closet will be created by taking in a “dead space” between the guest house and the barn, which thankfully is under the same roof as the guest house.

The first order of business was to remove the bricks which we had used to brick in the existing window and remove the bird housing currently taking up space in the dead corner. Thankfully the “wall” we built earlier came out extremely easily (chalk that up to really messing up the bricking – well, nobody is perfect the first time around and we learned now.)


As always, the bird housing came down pretty easy too – but it always is a messy task. Bird droppings, bugs and other yuckyness abound. It really is a good thing we are getting rid of all of these things now. We have little doubt that if these things were left in the house any longer, would definitely have some pretty bad effects on the structure. Bugs and the nitrates from the bird waste have just taken a toll on everything.

Next in line was to start breaking away the wall underneath the old window. We knew this would be hard work, but didn’t still didn’t expect it to take us nearly four hours of cutting and hammering to knock things out. Stefan is not really a friend of using angle grinders, especially our big one, but here it was a Godsend.


The only problem with the angle grinder is that is quite messy. As you can see in the picture below you can’t see anything when the dust starts flying. When doing work like this, you really must wear safety glasses, gloves, breathing mask….everything. We both wore full safety gear and still when we took a shower after the work, we found dust in places we didn’t know we had…. also, Stefan’s mask must have slipped at some point and the white dust around and in his nose made it look like he is supporting Colombia’s GDP – which most certainly is not the case. The point is, play it safe; you do not want to breathe in this stuff.


Another huge help came in the form of our neighbor. We used a fairly large hammer to knock out pieces of brick but in the end it just wasn’t enough. We were just about ready to head out to Hagebau for a sledgehammer when Stefan suggested we ask our neighbor to see if he could lend us one. A few weeks ago Stefan ran into the neighbor across the street and the guy offered that we could borrow any piece of equipment we would ever need – we just have to say the word.

So we asked and just a few seconds later, Stefan returned with a sledge hammer. Certainly a much better alternative then spending 40 bucks for a sledgehammer we would never have another use for after this project.


By 6pm neither of us could lift our arms any more, let alone operate the large angle grinder – so we called it quits for the day. Safety First. There is probably another hour of work left for tomorrow to clean things up a bit more and make things square, but it was a good start.


Tomorrow we can start on bricking the new wall and, voila, we’ll kill two birds with one stone: A nice walk in closet and a useful solution for the dead space.