The Day Demolition Paid Us Back ₩129,490

Day two. We finished the interior strip-out and turned to everything that had been added onto the hanok over the decades — the accretions that hid what the house actually was.

Three targets today: the wooden veranda attached to the courtyard, a large steel frame standing over the roof, and the acrylic sheeting that wrapped it. Tile removal was on the plan too, but a bare roof in the rain is a disaster, so we deferred it until the new tile work could follow immediately.

The veranda came off first. Moisture from below had rotted the boards; the nails and fixings were rusted through. Nothing worth saving — full removal. It sat on steel beams, so we unscrewed everything and pried the planks off with a crowbar. With it gone, the courtyard suddenly had room to move, and we could finally see the state of the ground.

The rooftop steel structure was the biggest offender. A previous owner had built it for shade and weather protection — practical, but it was the single thing most responsible for hiding the hanok’s original silhouette. We cut the frame with a grinder and dismantled it slowly by hand, mostly to avoid smashing the roof tiles beneath.

Then demolition paid us for the first time. The dismantled steel could be sold as scrap. A local yard quoted ₩230/kg for construction steel, so we loaded the one-ton truck full and drove over. The scale read 563 kg — ₩129,490, which the owner rounded to ₩130,000 in cash on the spot. Site clearance and cost recovery in one trip.

Next up: taking the roof apart tile by tile, and finally seeing the condition of the rafters underneath. The real structural work on this house starts now.