“Un Vrai Chantier”

Directly translated, this expression (used by a relative on Facebook) means it’s truly a construction site, but it means more than that. This expression means that something is a chaotic mess. The mess is implied in the term construction site! Wouldn’t we all like to imagine our own construction site with all the materials removed being neatly sorted for reuse or recycling or haz mat disposal? I guess that is not the reality. The reality is a dumpster of nearly the width and length of the driveway and a huge heap of the materials that were sheltering your family just a few weeks before, with lead paint dust and asbestos fibers hanging in the air. The only thing that can assuage the shock is the thought of someplace hit by a tornado—now that is un vrai chantier!

Okay, I know this looks bad… but would a tornado stack the salvaged doors together (as at right) and come clean up after itself the next day?

How orderly can one really expect a construction site to remain during the process? My former boss, who’s seen hundreds of construction sites where work was happening on historic properties, knows the truth of the matter: it gets worse before it gets better, as he remarked on Facebook when I posted a sensationally awful-looking demo photo (seen below) of the house this week. But I also recall, from early in my preservation career, when he took the precaution of having giant signs made for a historically significant movie theater on Hollywood Boulevard that was undergoing a serious amount of work for its rehabilitation (lots of alterations had occurred) and adaptation to a two-screen theater. These huge signs—several of them around the site—served to remind every person swinging a sledgehammer that they had to be mindful of what was to remain and what was to go, lest they damage historic features and destroy the historic integrity of the building. You’re not here to knock down the place—this is not your usual demo job! And our architects for this project daintily label the demo sheet “Dismantle Plan”! #goals

I remember one project where the crew knocked out the tiled walls of a long hallway and hauled it away and cleaned up BEFORE I even had a chance to reserve a sample of the tile we were supposed to replicate! Fortunately, more of it turned up elsewhere in the building a few weeks later, or we would have been in trouble (tax credits were at stake—don’t make them mad!).

That crooked stud to the left of the back door makes me laugh. We hired the contractor who did that, and I guess he thought no one would ever see it!

This brings me to our demo subcontractor. When I first met him, I remember being impressed with his sensitivity. He walked up and looked at the house and said, “Oh, what a nice house!” and admired our orange tree in the back, which is in the way of the new footprint, and advised us sympathetically to “enjoy this last season of oranges” since such trees don’t usually transplant well (I’m sure it’s been done, but I have heard this from a few who know). He lives close-by and seemed attuned to the job, which was reassuring. Even though I like the photo above for the shock value, two days later it looks much better:

I think all that’s left to demo is the junky concrete on the right—then they can prep the ground for the foundation, coming soon. And I think the shingles on the front of the house are still intact, just to avoid that “vrai chantier” look as long as possible from the public right of way!

See? Not so bad now!

My in-laws have been asking a lot of good questions about where all that removed material ends up and whether any of it gets used for fuel, etc. (they claim there’s a system like this for industrial energy in France). As it turns out, a big pile of salvaged metal was gathered and then hauled off a few days later, so some sensible reclamation did happen. None of the kitchen appliances were salvageable (and were barely usable—we got out of there just in time!). The hot water heater was already a used one when we bought it. The HVAC unit was 25 years old. The useful life of these things was over, and the copper, etc. was salvaged. As for the plaster, insulation, wood lath (NOT “LATHE”! That’s something entirely different!), old wiring, etc., I think it’s all just construction waste, sadly, which is why we can’t repeat enough that the embodied energy in the materials of an existing building has immense value and “the greenest building is the one that’s already built”! Imagine the difference between the trash heap and energy required to tear down this whole house and build a whole new three bedroom, two-bath house in its place. It’s not that the new house would be bad—I’d love a well-designed new house—but there’s no comparison to the amount of resources required for that when houses can be rehabilitated and neighborhoods preserved instead.

Back to our trash heap: I think three light fixtures end up getting trashed—wait, no, five if you count the simple sockets in the closet ceilings; the rest we bought in 2014 and will reuse or give away. I laugh when I think of the fixtures that were there when we bought the place. Should have taken photos of those for a full appreciation of the transformation! Picture, for example, a ceiling fan with caned ‘70s oak paddles and frilly, frosted shades and you’ll get the idea of how cheap, ugly and dated it was (sorry, previous owners…). Yes, those did end up in a landfill. It was definitely the end of their useful life.

I saw a similar house to ours a few blocks away in this very state a few years ago—all the studs at the back of the house exposed prior to construction of an addition—and I was horrified to see so many of the studs eaten by termites. Our framing has held up well, though! And here I was expecting much worse. There is one end joist, though, of which you can see a detail below, that is a shadow of its former self. That one will be extracted and replaced.

YIKES. Just relieved that there isn’t more of this.