On wednesday, my good friends Aaron and Tom helped me haul out the first phase of demolition debris from the new house. i rented a uhaul truck to schlep it all up to the richard burns trash transfer station. It was a very exciting day. I picked up the Uhaul at around 11:30 and got to the house by noon where tom was waiting for me. we got to work hauling all of the old crumbling drywall that was stacked in the back yard out to the truck which was a tricky job because it literally crumbled in our arms. we made a mess of it, but it was probably the easiest part. when aaron got there we were just getting started on hauling out stuff from the house. I tried to make it as easy as possible to haul it out before wednesday by bagging everything up in contractor bags and stacking them in the living room. The first few bags i loaded were way to heavy as i was a little overzealous filling them. i didnt think about having to move them. after about 6 bags, i started half filling them since plaster weight adds up quickly. we had one bag mishap when it got caught on the trailer hitch and spilled out into the street. it was a mess of wallpaper, linoleum, cotton insulation and drywall scraps. we got it cleaned up and swept up the dirt in front of the house and we were on our way to north philly to unload it. i couldnt help but remark to tom and aaron that it was odd that we were taking the trash from our middle class neighborhood to a really run down neighborhood in a part of town i didnt know existed. it was kind of terrifying. the houses up there had bars across their porches and steel security doors. it was very bizarre, but probably out of necessity. it made me think about things a little bit more than i have before. anyway....we made it safely in and out of there..
the trash place is awesome. its totally contained in a cirty block by 25 foot high concrete walls.. its full of huge piles of trash and lumber and there is a large backhoe which made me think that the whole place is sort of like a post apocalyptic coin operated claw machine.. it was cool to see the bulldozer drive over refrigerators and lumber with ease. watching all of the philly roughnecks hollering and cursing and spitting was fun too. aaron and i agreed it would be fun to work there (i said i would probably only last a day before the novelty wore off).
here's a shot of tom sweeping out the last of the crap...
here is aaron handing me the keys to the truck to pull it up a little. he was just as amazed at the place as i was. we were like kids in a candy store... i think he really dug that place...
we all guessed in the truck how much stuff we had. aaron said 3800 pounds. i said two tons (4000) tom guessed a ton and a half, and when we were weighed again on the way out we realized tom was closest. 3260 lbs. the whole thing only cost about $60 for the truck and $120 for the debris. not a bad day. we started work at noon and we had returned the truck and were sipping iced coffees at the gleaners by 3:30.
it was awesome....
now im finishing the demo work, and bagging it all up for one more trip. maybe this week, but maybe the week after that...
No comments:
Post a Comment