Demolition: How We Dealt With "The Danger Wall" And Other Unexpected Issues

My family has been involved in the Wrecking business for a long time: So when we needed to gut our new condo to make way for the new, I was expected to call my older brother.

My older brother has a bit of a reputation: he is often described as 'passionate', a 'big character' and/or an 'acquired taste'. DH was concerned if we called him, would he do it 'right', would he be reliable? Would it be more stressful than if we went with a company that does this kind of thing professionally? To be fair, I too was a bit worried but in the end, I put my foot down: this was family. It would be mean to go elsewhere for us. Right?

A few of the issues we were concerned about happened. They were due either to to working with family or the fact it was, specifically, my brother doing the work ... but on the plus side, we got a fantastic 'deal'. You won't be hiring my brother though, so here'some of the more generalized things that happened that you might be interested in hearing about!

1. Getting Condo Board Approval

First we had to get approval from the condo board to do ANYTHING. They were helpful in that they told us which walls we couldn't take down and which ones were good to go. We were given information about things like hours of the day when reno work was permitted and how to dispose of construction waste. They also warned us about what we have since deemed 'The Danger Wall'.

2. Dealing with Nasty Weirdo WTF Type Danger Walls

The Danger Wall was about 2 inches thick and stood between the kitchen and dinning room/living room. It was filled with conduits and wiring to ancient satellite TV systems, forgotten Rogers cables, electrical what-nots and, most importantly 'The Bell Cable'. We heard horror stories about how one new owner took a chainsaw to his unit's Danger Wall resulting in 10's of thousands of dollars in repair and weeks of no phone service for all the people in units above his. Not a great way to get to know your neighbours! So did this mean our kitchen was doomed to be a 7' x 9' micro galley style coffin which was absolutely ridiculous considering the massive size of our 1500+ square foot condo?? No. Not in MY reno!

Luckily, with my brothers experienced guidance, and the right tools, his demo crew was able to chip away at the plaster and metal lathe that encased all the cables and tubes: clearing away the wall and nothing else. I was really proud of this job he did!

We were able to go through each of the cables to see if they were either still in use or not (meaning we could get rid of them) or if we could move them. We ended up re-routing the electrical and got rid of the satellite dish business from the 70's. After many calls and confirmations, we were able to cut the old Rogers cable as the location for that had moved to outside the building.

The Bell fiber optic cable was the only one that absolutely could not be cut or could be moved a few feet over for thousands of dollars. Since we were putting in an island anyway, we designed it with a post and moved the electrical outlets to that one column too. it turned out totally awesome!

3. Guard Your Bins!

Once word spread around the building that we were gutting our unit and doing major work, we heard a buzz... from other people's power tools! Turned out a lot of people in our building were doing some kind of reno work on their unit. Some of them were other owners, and invited us up/down to see their ideas come alive mid-manifest. Some people were just happy that work was being done to improve the building and bring up property values.

Other people wanted the value of the building to remain as low as possible to keep their living costs equally as low. Others complained of noise and dirtiness in the halls, strangers coming and going: once the security guard scolded my DH as he was taking out the garbage late one night that he shouldn't be working so late, mistaking him for a contractor. DH was ok with this... he was kinda proud of it actually. This was stuff we could live with.

One thing that happened that was totally not ok was when sketchy contractors working on other units tried to dump their construction waste into our bin. When that didn't work, they tried to tell the superintendent that the toilets they were dumping into the regular garbage bin came from our unit. Luckily there were cameras on the elevators that showed which floor they were coming from. When they Condo Board accused my brother of not taking care of our waste properly, we got lucky: the cameras saved us.

If you have a big job and you get a demolition crew in, they should have a bin or a way to dispose of the waste according to the building and municipal guidelines. If you are doing the job yourself, and you just need some help getting rid of the waste, you can get a company like 1-800-GOT-JUNK? to help. Even if it's just an appliance or a wall: in many cases they will also recycle the waste too! I would bet too that they would have experience on how to keep the bin free from unwanted contributions from parasitic sketchy types that call themselves contractors.

Here's The Recap

1. Clear plans with the condo board first to make sure what you want to do is permitted and also to find out about possible issues BEFORE they arise.

2. Don't give up if a tricky part comes up: find a contractor to help and make the calls to figure out a work around. It will be worth it!

3. Find out what the RIGHT way to dispose of your construction waste is BEFORE you start and get a pro to help.

And some other tips, in handy point form:

4. Do not throw out custom drape tracks just because it makes it easier to paint the ceilings. or get carried away and take the covers off the baseboard heaters and have them end up in the garbage pile by accident.

5. Demo includes not only smashing stuff down, but also shoveling it up, putting it in bins, carting it down the hall and booking the freight elevator for the day we took it out to the bin we hired.

6. I tried to get some money back by salvaging stuff that was in good enough shape to resell. Lighting fixtures, sinks, tiles we found onsite when we got here, a door, etc. It was a total pain in the butt to manage this kind of thing when I didn't even have my computer set up to properly post things. Value Village, ReStrore or 1800GOTJUNK? are a great alternative.

7. Get a storage unit for things you don't want wrecked. We ended up going over our time line and had move in mid-reno. This also means you don't fill up space with stuff when you need to paint underneath it.

8. Get a plant mister to spritz water about when it’s lunch or break time to keep the dust down a bit. You will need lots of Kleenex for the weird boogers especially if you forget to wear your dust mask.

9. Epsom Salt baths, Absorbine Jr., remembering to stretch, and lifting with your legs: none of this will be enough to deal with the pain in your sore muscles 100%, but it will help. Take things like Advil AFTER the fact: if you take pain killers before the day starts, you can push yourself too far and get hurt.

10. We used our south facing balcony as a break zone. It was really important to have a nice, clean, comfortable area to have a break in with some snacks and water available.