Damage Inc

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

At least if one is to believe an ancient Chinese philosopher.
For our projects however it tends to start with demolishing something.

I knew that we'd have to tear up the adjacent deck as the idea is to lay the pool in such way that we can lay back the boards to become lined up with pool.

However taking down the pear tree did hurt my soul. It's been there long before we moved here and we've lived in this house since December 2003.
I'll have to take comfort in the fact that the tree has only produced fruits on one occasion so no big loss on that front.

As they say, "you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs".

Taking on the role of a lumberjack.

"Oh, I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay,I sleep all night and I work all day."

No I'm not okay as a lumberjack, in fact as suck at it.
Chainsaw Charlie was a bit snaggletoothed from last usage having had to chew through floorboards with an army of nails. Not finding it worth to grind/sharpen the chain (mostly 'cos I lack the skills how) I happily went and bought a new one.
I had all the specs correct, 3/8" link length, .50" link width, 14" sword, ....still I managed to get a too short chain. Apparently there's a difference in how many chain links there are...*duh*
No, I'm not a lumberjack...I work with computers and I'm happy with that.

Having sorted out this minor hickup the tree came down without any further issues.

With that out of the way it was time to turn the attention to the deck.
I enlisted my son thinking that he could poke around removing the screws while me and Agneta were occupied with moving some heavy concrete slates to make way for the water lines to come.

If you ask me, the real problem with child labor is the lack of perseverance...:)
Pretty much halfways through the first line (of four) of screws my son proclaimed that he now was tired and needed a break. Apparently the break consisted of jumping around in the bouncy castle, not sure how that would allow for recuperation.

Oh well a bucketful of screws later and few strategic whacks with the mallet we arrive at this,

Applying the saw to break up the construction, it will anyways need to be partly rebuilt to fit the pool.

One pile of neatly stacked ex-deck.

Salvaging as much as possible of the flowers/bushes towards the street where the excavator will come through.

The final part of the weekends demolition derby was to take down a part of the fence where the excavator will barge through sometime in the near future.

All and all a very destructive weekend, a lot a things got torn down. 

The biggest thing is however yet to come when the panzer division invades our garden...

Title reference: Damage Inc/Master of Puppets/Metallica