The walk-out terrace is probably the best feature of the house: it's spacious, got good views, a breeze, it's quiet... It came with a built-in bar and bench mounted to the horizontal slat wall. Unfortunately, the bar sagged and took up space we could use for a dining table, and the dramatically angled bench was uncomfortable in the extreme. With barely 2 weeks living here, and no adequate tools, we decided to take them both out this weekend.
First the bar. It seemed like it should be easy. There were no brackets, somehow the bar platform must have been attached to the railing wall. Oh... my... Yup: 5-inch sometimes-stainless screws into 2-inch blocks, lots of them, I mean, like three per block: the metal of the screws was being used as structural members, like a pin reinforcing a broken bone. And we found that almost everything was also glued with at least 3 different types of adhesive. We couldn't get to the screw heads on the opposite side of the railing with any ease. And we didn't want to brute force things too much because we'd gouge or break the attractive horizontal wood of the railing.
Those blocking struts that supported the bar had to go. But the screws that held them in were screwed in from the outside of the fence, and mostly hidden by the window boxes they built as part of the railing fence. I could barely reach them from the terrace if I leaned way over, but I couldn't even see the screw heads. If I really grunted, I could locate them with a screwdriver. But if I dropped the tool, it would fall 9 floors to the roof of the parking garage in the ex-courtyard below. We didn't have any string, so Irene gave me the off-cut selvedge of a curtain she just hemmed so I could tie the screwdriver to my wrist. It got tangled after a few turns but worked fine. We finished up by stacking all the wood so we could take it down and put it in the bins.
The next day, we went for the bench. Every time we tried to sit on it, we complained. It had finger holes in the bench boards where you could (sometimes) lift up the seat boards and store things like potting soil and garden tools. But it wasn't water tight so tools rusted, snails found their way into various nooks, and all the "structural" wood -- a maze of 2x2-inch sticks, ranging from 3-inch long to 6-feet long -- was rotting away. The flower box slats sat directly on the stone floor and were turning into soil itself. Lots of creepy crawly bugs scurried as we removed board after board, block after block.
There was also electrical wiring going to a junction box and then to a double outlet. I took care of that, and learned some more about Spanish wiring and how their modular outlet boxes work (I have to say: I rather like them, compared to US standard electrical boxes).
After a full day of work, we'd removed the entire bench and flower box and had a ton of debris wood on the terrace we had to get rid of.
On the street corner are a set of mini-dumpsters categorized for various recyclables and true garbage where we could put the wood. Almost all our wood had embedded 2- to 5-inch screws, and some of the wood was 3 meters long so it wouldn't fit. We didn't have a saw, so I just drilled through these long boards with a pattern of 3 holes to emulate a cut, then snapped the rails with our weight: using a drill bit in place of a saw blade is a gross hack, but it worked.
We've got a few more days to lug this dangerous stuff down our mini-elevators to the refuse dumpsters, but we'll get there.
We've gained a huge amount of usable space which will allow us a lot more flexibility. We've already ordered some comfortable outdoor chairs, and are in the process of ordering a couple outdoor tables to match. A 80x120cm table will go in the space where the bar used to be -- a perfect size for a dining table and chairs. Another 80x80cm table and chairs will go in the larger space where we play hide-and-seek with the sun: we'll move a smaller table around in the shade of the morning and of the large umbrella.
Demolishing parts of a house means it's yours, reinventing it for your personal needs. This is our house. Esta es nuestra casa.
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