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 ;)

Yikes!

I think this old house is telling us it can't cope with us anymore :(
This is the power plug in the laundry. Thankfully I only had the washing machine plugged in to the power board when it started burning and I'm also thankful that the power board had a safety switch that cut off before too much damage was done.

So long carport

Today Trev decided to pull apart my carport.
It really is too small for my mummy wagon but I parked in it anyway.
It doesn't stop it from getting wet or dusty really.
But it was a carport for my mummy wagon, which will have to live out in the elements for a while.

Reclaiming some more back yard.

The kids are getting a trampoline for Christmas but we have an issue with space in the yard now. While walking around trying to work out where to put it, we realised that we have lost quite a lot of yard space from trees growing over from the neighbours yard.
We measured it to be a good 10 foot, so quickly decided that there was no time like the present to cut these plants back and reclaim our yard :)

C Dude is impressed by the big pile of branches. Trev is unimpressed at having to pay more tip fees to be rid of said branches ;)

Bird in the house!

So we've had birds nesting in the roof.
I've been sus about their presence in the roof as there is remnants of old nests up in the eave, but I thought these birds were in the carport. Recently I was proven wrong when the boys started yelling that a bird flew through their bedroom, which they followed, and watched it disappear up into the roof where the old chimney was.
Their babies have been squarking for a couple of weeks now and mummy bird has been carrying on at me when Im at the car. She sits on the gutter, going off at me with a worm in her beak until I'm out of sight.
This morning I was roused by excited squealing that there was another bird in the house. This one had perched itself on the curtain rail in the spare room. Upon investigation, I saw that it was a juvenile, and a very panicky juvenile at that :(
The poor thing flapped about and ended up behind the organ on the floor. I managed to chase it out of there but it got stuck in the curtain in the kids room. I grabbed it with a towel and took it outside where I let it go. That little thing took off like crazy, way up over the roof of the house across the road! So I guess it got the flying thing figured out in a real hurry ;)