Demolition continues...

I had a chance to stop by the site today and see some of the demo in progress. Work is progressing quickly. They've taken down the top two floors of the building at this point and the shots on the 'roof' are taken on the previously existing second floor. In the new building, this will be about 5 feet below our third floor apartment. 

Workers removing brick on the second floor

Workers removing brick on the second floor

The majority of the demo is simply removing and then moving the bricks that made up the building's walls. There were 3 wythes of bricks making up each wall, so there are lots of bricks to be disposed of. Luckily, the building is so old the bricks are very easy to remove. (Yiannes was able to rip up a few bricks by hand with very little effort.) For now, the bricks are being collected and dumped down into the cellar level via a chute:

Worker dumps a load of brick down the chute to the basement level.

Upon visiting the lower level, you can see where all of the bricks are ending up for the time being. These pics are taken on the level above where the bricks have started being collected. So there are roughly 8 feet of piled bricks below us and what remains of the floors. We will bring a backhoe in to remove the bricks and for the excavation required for the foundation. Given the weight of each brick, this is a much more efficient way of removing them all at once:

Huge pile of bricks from the top few floors have filled the cellar.

Piles and piles of bricks

You guessed it: More bricks!

Back on the roof, you can see the other non-brick materials that have been removed have been sorted for recycling and reuse in the construction. All of the metal will be recycled and the large timbers removed from the floors will be used for shoring up during the foundation work. Also, the bricks will likely be reused or sold. Bricks like this are of a little value as they dont need to be transported as far if they are already in manhattan. This is not a trivial concern once you realize how heavy these things are...

Materials removed and saved for recycling and reuse in the yard.

Finally a few shots from what remains of the ground floor "parlor":

1st floor parlor level

What remains of the hallway on the first floor.

Oh, and the all important port-a-potty shot:

The Shitter.

 The next post should be of a good sized hole in the ground or at least the excavator removing the bricks.