Demolition: Old House (part 5): walls

    A reminder of what the old house used to look like when we were living there back in 2012...

 

And the same view in 2020 after our recent 'modifications'... 

It turns out knocking down a house is quite a messy business.

 

The 'ancient' mural that we had previously discovered hidden behind the bathroom wall coverings, almost matched the blue summer sky behind.   

 

Those trees in the background look particularly realistic. No matter though, it was still going to get smashed to smithereens.

During the demolition of the mural wall, we noticed a small wooden box buried in-between the blocks!

Could this be the much hoped-for hidden treasure? Precious jewels or gold, concealed right under our noses, deep within the fabric of the building? 

No such luck. It turned out to be just a crummy wooden box filled with cement, presumably constructed because the builders ran out of bricks and couldn't be bothered to go and buy some more. So we angrily pulverised it into dust with a sledgehammer for getting our hopes up.

We took all the windows out carefully with a view to selling them, but after a bit of research realised that they didn't have any value, so it was yet more stuff to add to the ever-growing scrap pile.

The sections of wall containing windows were a little easier to take down, as the columns of blocks either side of the glass were structurally weaker. 

It was shocking how much rubble was being produced. Looking at the huge mounds of material building up, it felt like there was enough for 2 or 3 houses. Clearing the site was going to be a nightmare.

 

Removing a section of wall to the left of the old patio doors.  

Before:

After:

Naturally, the site inspector climbed up the remaining walls to check their integrity and supervise the rest of the demolition. 

Gradually the walls were knocked apart, one giant block at a time...

The garden was really opening up, but the mountains of rubble still made it hard to visualise how it would all look once it was clear.

From the main bedroom doors of the 'new' house, it was nice to see more and more of the landscape gradually being revealed. 

A return to full-time employment meant progress on the demolition slowed, but still we spent most weekends chipping away at the remaining walls.  

We had toyed with the idea of leaving the base of the chimney up (pictured on the left) as a garden feature, but it was a lot bigger than anticipated and not very attractive.

There were mountains of heavy rubble forming in every side of the garden. 

The last remaining walls. Once they were down and the rubble shifted, we could start breaking up the concrete floor slabs and whatever foundations were under the walls... in hindsight it would have made a lot more sense to just get a demolition expert in to do it but the one guy we found messed us around so much that we gave up & did it ourselves (familiar story). 

With the walls down, we had a better idea of what the new house would look like standing in the garden alone, but we had a lot more work to go before it was clear.

Demolition: Old House (part 4): roof

Before we could take any more of the walls down, we needed to deal with the brickwork that formed the central chimney. Shifting the 'platform' along was important as it provided a sturdy access point for dismantling the large fireplace that ran through the middle of the house.

 

Although it was hard work demolishing the house by hand, the lovely view it was gradually revealing provided plenty of motivation to keep going.

The dreaded two roofs... slates, battens, plastic membrane 'bitumen-carpet', wooden planks then structural timbers. What a nightmare.

 

 The central fireplace was much bigger than expected; a sprawling mess of crumbling bricks and rough stonework that completely filled the roof space.

Luckily, the mortar was completely shot, so removing the bricks and stone was fairly easy.

Similarly, many of the roof timbers were crumbling with rot and riddled with woodworm.

Once all the stonework was removed from the roof space...

... it left a nice big hole dropping down to ground level...

 

... with debris spewing into the old living room...

 

... and another ever-growing mound of rubble in the garden. 

Knocking down the house was tough, but clearing up all the mess afterwards was even worse.

 

After the chimney stonework was removed, the next section of roof could be tackled.

Sledgehammer FRENZY!

That's half the roof demolished. As before, the working platform (using old roof planks) could be slid along and that allowed the next section of ceiling to be taken down.

Once the ceilings were down, we took out the windows...

... then it was just a matter of taking down the remaining walls. 

The site inspector forgot his safety boots so insisted on being carried to his inspection podium.

As ever, the over-sized, extra-dense blocks were horrendously difficult to prise apart using an electric breaker, but after much persuasion, the walls gradually came down.

As pictured in the bottom-right below, the walls had no mortar between the giant blocks; just some sort of concrete mix that bonded the whole thing together seamlessly so that it resembled a pre-formed concrete panel. 

It was all so badly-designed. Single-skin, thick block walls with no insulation or damp proof course; so the house was built to be virtually indestructible, yet to live in it was freezing cold and mouldy as hell.  

As the old walls came down, we were gradually getting an idea of what the back garden might look like without a crummy house taking up all the space.

The blue tits had finally moved out of their nest at the eastern corner of the house, so we were now able to take down the remaining part of the roof. Hurrah!

 

The roof construction, like the rest of this accursed house, was a never-ending series of bodges. The workmanship was dreadful and the preferred building method was just to smash rusty six-inch nails through everything with a lump hammer.   

The roof slates were removed and carried down carefully, as we were hoping to recoup a little money by selling them on later.

Once the slates were off, we could remove the battens. On a normal roof, this would then give you access to the roof timbers, but of course, we had that second roof underneath to deal with. 

Note the smoke rising up from behind the house. The rotten, roof timbers were lowered to the garden below...

 

 

 

... then swiftly burnt in the brazier we made from the old oil tank.  

 

 

The thick bitumen membrane covering the 'inner roof' was fixed to the boards using hundreds of nails and was incredibly hard to remove. To add to the difficulty, there were also numerous sheets of metal nailed over the top, presumably installed as some sort of half-arsed repair back in the day.

 

Once the bitumen membrane and steel sheets were taken off, we could finally get to the planks underneath.

There was a great sense of relief when the final section of the horrible bitumen-membrane was peeled away.

And not long afterwards, the roof was finally gone.

Taking away the roof, improved the view from the main bedroom. 

It'll be much better when the whole miserable house is gone.