Deck-razing before raising a deck

I'm creating this blog to give folks the chance to follow the progress of this project.  Since El Niño is cutting us a little break, I am taking advantage of the good weather up here, and getting the project started.

Here are some "before" pictures:

This part will go away, as it is rarely used...

The picnic table will probably end up shifted a bit more toward the camera position once the new portion is place, as this section will be wider (extend four feet further to the left) but will end at the edge of the house.

So I punched in a few late-afternoon hours pulling off the rails after moving furniture over to the back patio...

And next morning I quickly cobbled together a plank support for easier access.

And here's the result of a couple of hours of work on a very warm spring (Stupor Bowl) morning!  I'll have to re-hang the phone / cable drop, carefully, but the demo is well started.  I'm going to see how salvageable the deck boards are, but it's hard to tell at present.