Reusing waste can reduce Construction costs, and save time too.

Removing a damaged porch results in a lot of waste, but that waste can help elsewhere. My Son bought a house for rental use. He wanted to buy something that he could pay cash for, understanding that there would be a lot of repair needed.

It is a nice house:

The work today is concentrating on the patch that was damaged to the point of hazard. The concrete companies quoted the porch repair at $4,000, and he decided we should do the work ourselves.

First the demolition to remove the fractured top:

Notice the stacked pieces that have been removed. All this broken concrete has to be disposed of, before the repairs can begin.

The back room has been the most damaged, and needs a new floor:

We already posted on the new foundation we installed, to recover this back porch that was walled in to make another room. Once the rotten back porch structure was removed, the floor had to be rebuilt. Here is the vapor barrier add after the wood was cleaned out. We began moving the debris from the front porch in and beginning the fill for the new floor.

The Mistake we made:

We bought the two wheeled wheelbarrow to protect our backs, but we bought the biggest one, and it won't go through all the doors! We should have purchased the next sized smaller....

But it worked okay, and cut out 80% of the hauling:

Here is the debris installed as a fill for the new floor. This will be over filled with compacted gravel, once the porch demo is done. Then a layer of sand will be tamped and leveled, to prep for the floor.

The porch is looking better:

But more demo work still needs to be done. With Petunia supervising, we will finish soon I'm sure!

Most of the repairs have been diy, but we have paid some work done; both for safety and to save time.

We had the main garage door repaired:

After we built a new wall on the right side, the garage is now usable.

One job almost completed:

This door was recovered from the destroyed adjacent wall, but we still need to add a good lock and replace the window.

We paid to have this tree removed, because it was too close to two houses:

But they wanted too much to remove the trunk, so we will do that. Here it is ringed to kill the rest of this tree. It is about 12 feet tall.

So get quotes, and decide what is best hired, and what you can diy within your time and money restraints. This decision point will be different for each project!

Read, study, and try new things; and grow in skill each time!