Serious demolition time!

While J the carpenter has been busy putting down the flooring in the new part, Trev has had a full on couple of days pulling apart the back end of the house. It's hard work and he's exhausted, but I think he secretly likes smashing stuff with a sledge hammer and crow bar lol.

This view is standing in our bedroom and looking through the two other bedrooms!
At some stage, a false ceiling was put in the kitchen and the bedroom. The ceiling in our bedroom has also been lowered, but thankfully they hadn't lowered the entry or lounge.

First look in. Kind of like going into a cave for the first time ;)

View of same area after the false ceiling lining was pulled off.

The corner of the ceiling in the rear bedroom. I really do think that the ceiling was lowered in the kitchen and middle bedroom to make the heights uniform through the back end of the house.

The bathdry has also been pulled to bits. View here is from the kitchen!

Big day at the house!

Today we have had a big day out as a family, having lots of fun pulling the house apart.

Trev has been pulling that awful aluminium cladding off the outside...

There was thousands of little tack nails that were left over in the floor boards from when the the masonite from under the kitchen lino was removed. C Dude wanted to join in. He loved pulling up the nails so much so that he was very sad when there was no more to pull out.

Carpet gone from the lounge. Note the good centimetre wide crack in the corner (resulting from the re-blocking unfortunately) and the telstra plug screwed to under the window sill.

Back pergola gone

Pulling out stuff.

Here we go!




Kitchen gone...

Bathdry gone...

String lines and hurdles :)

This string line is running from the bottom of the bearer of the existing house to the hurdles that the carpenter has set up in the back yard for the new extension! (for those paying attention...it is only a couple of inches lower than the photo of the plants growing between the weatherboards and cladding on the previous blog post)

Here we are looking back towards the house and the little nail in the middle of the hurdle is the rear corner of the deck. The next hurdle you can see to the left is for the rear corner of the house (which is the dining area).

J the carpenter packing up his string as he is happy with his setting out.

The bad side of cladding over weatherboards!

We have planned to take off this aluminuim cladding off from the start. It's awful stuff!
It's terrible for insulating. On winter nights it's freezing and on hot days it will give you 3rd degree burns if you touch it. Last week we had 3 days of 40 degree temperatures and when I arrived home from work at 10 PM it was still 30 degrees and the wall burning hot to the touch. The old house with no insulation was the hottest we have experienced it.
I understand the desire for some to "never have to paint again" but this is ridiculous the way this stuff transmits heat and cold into the house :/

Our carpenter needed access to the bearers to set the levels for the extension and discovered that plants had also been growing between the cladding and the weatherboards.I'm not sure about what the polystyrene is supposed to do. I think it's got more to do with preventing contact between the timber and the aluminium. If it's also to provide insulation then it's woefully inadequate!

Last trough bath :(

We've been moving out this weekend and I thought I'd give Scooby one last bath in the laundry trough. She's grown heaps and I don't think I'd be able to safely lift her out for much longer anyway, so even if we were staying this probably would have been one of the last ones!

X marks the spot!

It's beginning :)

This is the mark for the stump on the far left hand side of the house. The corner of the new lounge room!

Very exciting times here I can assure you! It's also time for us to start packing up and moving out and into my parents house, where we will be living for a few months until the house is habitable. We had considered staying, but all options required money to be spent (caravan in the shed/build a bathroom in the shed/hiring a portable bathroom etc). We are also concerned about the safety of the kids and the need to work around them, therefore taking longer. Moving out and going hard at it seems to be the best plan for us and we're lucky that my parent have a big enough house and are willing to have us turn it upside down while we are here ;)