Safety first

When you dig big holes, and cut into old buildings, there are some risks. This week we got our site fence, to keep any wanderers out..



We also have a house that was built in the seventies, when various nasty forms of fibro cement were still in use; in eaves, the carport roof, wet areas and even under kitchen tiles. Nothing that a team of specialists can't (carefully) remove and take away for disposal...



Plus we get a lot more sunlight into the garage now! There'll be a loft space going in above here. One day.




The laundry and ensuite demonstrate that seventies tiles and fibro and sealants don't keep the water away from the timber. If it wants to get there, it will. Nothing that a good sander probably can't deal with...



We now have a nice clear view of the ash timber floor all the way through. Oh, and the digging outside?



Mechanical failures (of the excavator!) notwithstanding, the digging continues. The foundation around the back corner of the house is now gone (well, it's sitting on the dirt to the right) so the corner of the house is just resting on that steel beam. Getting access underneath is a lot easier now.

Variations and heading down

Every plan of course is perfectly precise, and so sewer pipes are where they are shown on the original plan, and not diagonally across the middle of the space set aside for our new staircase...



Oh, maybe it is... (that puddle is water, ok?)

And of course, the original plan says the end of the house is held up by the original foundations, and the new plan says the new end of the house will be held up by the basement foundations.




But what holds it up while you're building it, digging underneath the house, and cutting away the old foundations?



The biggest steel beam you'll hopefully ever need to drag in under your house! Half a tonne of metal and a little bit of shoving and propping later, the house is held up while the ground is removed underneath it. Interesting quote: "While we were at it, we straightened out your house. It was 15mm lower in that corner than it should have been". We're guessing the drought had caused that too, since the courtyard had cracked quite severely when the ground dried out and shrank.




We do like open-plan living! Inside has been cleaned up a lot more, and the boulevarde becomes a little clearer. It won't end up diagonal, there's just a few beams yet to be removed. But some of them hold up bits of the roof...

Second week down

The digging continues, and for amateur archaeologists it can be quite interesting.



The power of some tree roots is amazing; this one (just right of centre) is as thick and long as your arm. Its tree had been removed many years earlier. Above it is clay, heading down into decomposed red granite - the same stuff people buy and landscape with. Maybe a profit to be made from our dirt pile? Between the layers is a mysterious darker layer, perhaps evocative of some great flood or fire millenia ago. Or a leaky stormwater pipe in the last decade. Who knows...



The digging is now well below normal groundlevel, exposing the house foundations, and the outline of the basement is becoming visible.

Oh well, lots of hard work happening outside, and we've done a nice job of tidying up almost all of our stuff inside and piling it in our bedroom... Odd... Was that somebody with a crowbar inside the kids' rooms? And what's all that noise from the lounge room???




Oh dear...



Well, at least the kitchen is amazingly tidy. What's left of it... Except, as usual, people leave their stuff on the bench.




Standing at the front door, looking down the entire length of the house. This will eventually become a grand boulevarde, in the best Burley Griffin tradition. For now we'll just tiptoe carefully...

End of the first week...

So how much damage can you do in week?



Well, you can lose a fair bit of garage and house roof (tiles and timber frames!), and strip off quite a bit more brick from the walls that will be changed. Of course you need a decent tarp to cover the roof then - these are old semi-trailer truck sides, which are surprisingly light, and obviously have to be waterproof.

Inside there are now holes in the lounge room floor,

where new brick piers are being added between the existing piers. This is to support the new suspended concrete slab we'll have in the lounge room, bringing it to the same floor level as the rest of the house, and adding thermal mass behind the north-facing windows.


Having made a mess outside, time for some cleaning up, picking up all the general brick and concrete rubbish...



and dump it on a truck for removal, or on (what used to be) the front yard for later removal...



Hmmm - where did all that dirt come from...? Hey - who took the courtyard?



It's now back to original ground level, with only some stubborn reinforced concrete steps yet to be extracted. Amazing how fast it all happens...

... and so it begins...

It's 7.30am, I'm driving over to Evatt, and I get a phonecall from Mark, our builder. Will I be coming over this morning? They're breaking ground today, want to discuss some things, oh, and grab a key to get into the house. Of course I'll be there!

Actually, it's not the beginning. It's nearly 3 years since we started talking with Ric, our architect, about 5 years since we started seriously looking for architects, and 7 years since we decided we had a pretty good idea we wanted to 'fix things' around the house. We started with the idea of a 'master plan' design, and taking multiple little projects to get us there. Talking with Ric and his team we started getting more and better ideas... and the idea of staying in the house during the renovations became more and more a worse idea.

The things we did and went through to get to today don't fit here; maybe another day and a longer story. Let's not even get into the ongoing repairs to our Farrer unit, nor the many, many loads of stuff that went to the shed, charities, tips, etc.

At the end of today, where are we at? No courtyard wall, no bricks between the kids' windows, and a huge mess in the courtyard. We expect it'll get worse before it gets better...



Hey - I can see the garden from the lounge room!


With many apologies to our neighbours...



Hmmm, wall insulation does get in! (and falls out when the wall goes away)