Deck plans finished? Check. Permit in hand? Check. Materials arriving this week? Check. One thing still stood between us and getting started: the old, rotting balcony.
We began with a plan. I laid out tools (crowbar, sledgehammer, power drill), set up a ladder for access, put on some music (note the ceramic pig on the windowsill) and had Sherry on standby inside watching Clara and ready to help or snap photos. My intention was to remove boards carefully, study how the previous balcony had been built, and learn what to do differently for the new deck.
That careful approach didn’t last long. My “methodical” demo quickly turned into brute force:
I grabbed and wiggled the railing, and eventually the entire outside edge began to pull away from the two ledger boards fastened to either side of the house. It wasn’t scraping the siding so much as levering off the ledger boards that I planned to remove anyway.
Before long the balcony flipped over and detached from the house. The image below shows the underside of the balcony floor; the top rail has been twisted down to the ground.
With the main structure cleared away in about 15 minutes (no power tools required), I focused on removing the boards that attached the balcony to the house.
One ledger board had been bolted into the brick on one side…
…while the other appeared to be merely nailed to the siding. From what I’ve learned, attaching a ledger directly to siding isn’t recommended. Proper practice is to remove siding where the ledger will attach so the ledger can be fastened directly to the home’s rim board. If some of these terms sound unfamiliar, there are charts and diagrams that help clarify the parts and their roles.
Another key change we’ll make with the new deck is installing metal flashing to prevent moisture from seeping in and causing rot. The previous setup lacked flashing, and both the ledger board and the adjacent siding were noticeably deteriorated. I removed the damaged pieces to expose the rim board underneath.
Removing the bottom layer of siding revealed the rim board. Luckily, the new deck will cover that lower siding strip, so we can take out the good siding that needs to go and reuse it to repair small rotten sections above. Reusing that serviceable siding and adding proper metal flashing will help avoid future rot.
Here’s the progress shot we shared on Thursday:
In this photo I’m tapping the joist closest to the house out of its hanger; the other joist went down with the railing. It simply sat in a metal hanger, so a few light taps with a rubber mallet freed it—no heavy sledgehammer necessary.
To remove the ledger bolted to the brick, I used a wrench to loosen the hex nuts. The old installation didn’t include flashing, and the ledger showed its age.
After the board came off, the anchor bolts remained embedded in the brick. For now I left those in place; depending on the new materials and plan, I may reuse them or replace them with fresh anchors once the rest of the supplies arrive.
With the balcony removed, the pile of debris sits behind where I stood for this photo. We’ll deal with the cleanup later—right now we’re focused on progress and the comical “sliding door to nowhere.”
I’m excited—and a little anxious—to begin construction. Materials should arrive in the next few days, and my dad is scheduled to come help later in the week; he built the deck on the house I grew up in, so his experience will be invaluable. We may have jumped the gun on demoing without him, but by this time next week we expect to have visible progress to report. We won’t be done in three days—this will be tackled in stages over the coming weeks—but we’ll share each step with photos and details that may help others planning their own deck projects.
Have you demoed something recently? Do you have a demolition story—unexpected construction quirks, or lessons learned like the importance of flashing to prevent rot? We’d love to hear about it.