Deck plans finished? Check. Permit in hand? Check. Materials scheduled for delivery this week? Check. One thing still stood between us and starting construction: the old, rotting balcony.

We began this job with a plan. I gathered tools—a crowbar, sledgehammer, power drill—set up a ladder for access, put on music (note the ceramic pig on the windowsill), and had Sherry on standby inside with Clara, ready to help or snap photos. My intention was to carefully pry off boards and study how the previous deck had been built so I could learn and do things better when we install the new deck.

That careful plan quickly fell by the wayside. Instead of a measured teardown, my demo technique turned into a lot more pushing, pulling, and brute force.

After some determined tugging on the railing, the outer edge of the balcony began to twist away from the two ledger boards attached to the house. It wasn’t scraping the siding; the stress was concentrated on those ledger boards on each side, which I planned to remove anyway. Before long, the whole structure flipped over and separated from the house. What remained was the underside of the balcony floor, with the top of the railing now laying on the ground.

Once the main frame was down—surprisingly, this took only about 15 minutes and no heavy tools—the next step was removing the boards that connected the balcony to the house. One ledger board was bolted into brick on one side, and the other appeared to be merely nailed into the siding on the other. From research, nailing a ledger to siding is not recommended; the proper method is to remove any siding in the way and fasten the ledger directly to the rim board. If some of those terms are unfamiliar, I’ve been consulting helpful diagrams to keep everything straight.

I’ll also change how we handle water management. This previous setup lacked metal flashing, which leads to moisture intrusion and rot. In our case, both the ledger and the siding under it were noticeably rotted. I cleared the decayed material away to reveal the house rim board underneath.

Thankfully, the section where the new deck will sit includes a lower strip of wood siding that’s still in good condition. That piece will be removed anyway for the new build, so we can reuse some of the intact siding to patch the rotten area above. Most importantly, we’ll install metal flashing with the new deck to prevent recurring rot.

As shown in a quick progress snapshot we shared last Thursday, I also tapped loose the joist closest to the house; the other joist had come down with the railing. It had simply been held by a metal hanger, so a light tap with a rubber mallet dislodged it—no heavy demolition tools required for that piece.

To remove the ledger bolted into the brick, I used a wrench to loosen the hex nuts securing it. The absence of flashing was obvious, and the board had clearly seen better days. After taking it off, I left the bolts set in the brick for now. If they can’t be reused, I’ll remove them later and use those holes as a reference when installing new hardware once our materials arrive.

At this point the whole balcony was officially gone. For now it sits in a growing trash pile behind the house, but the important part is the progress: the old, unsafe structure is removed and we’re ready to move forward with a proper deck replacement.

I’m eager to begin construction. Materials should arrive in the next few days and my dad plans to come by later in the week to help. He built the deck on the house where I grew up, so his experience will be valuable—even if we did a bit of the demo without him. We don’t expect to have a finished deck in three days; this will be a staged project over the coming weeks. We’ll document each phase with photos and details, hoping our experience helps anyone else planning a deck build.

Have you tackled a demolition project lately? Were you surprised by the way something was built or by hidden rot caused by missing flashing? We’d love to hear demolition stories and lessons learned.