Basement demolition

Behold our very plain, very poorly finished basement.  A few months ago (well nearly a year ago, if I'm honest), we decided it was time to tear down the walls.  We were working through plans with the architect and our structural engineer, and we wanted to get a sense of foundation conditions, plus it was just time.  Chad struck the first blow, and just like that, we were in demolition mode. 

His first blow revealed the contents of the strange block in the middle of our future bedroom.  As suspected, it was a chimney base- no dead bodies or anything, luckily.

My cousin Mac showed up to help us out, and in a few short hours, we had knocked down everything except the bathroom and laundry area, which we wanted to leave in tact until we were at least permitted.  

We found some interesting structural stuff, including this three-quarter wall that seems to be holding up the earth behind it, and also appears to be poured rather shoddily.  Yikes.  That will be an interesting structural problem to tackle.   

We also found some interesting stuff in the walls, including an old door and window: 

Along with insulation, we also found large quantities of pages from porn magazines stuffed into the walls, (80's porn, judging by the amount of body hair featured, which you'll have to take my word for because we did not get any photos of it).

Here are a few more shots of the space post-demolition.  It is quite the blank slate, at this point.