Conference no 2

Big meeting between Daniel (architect), Con (structural engineer), Tony and Dave (builders), and us. So good to have everyone together, making sensible suggestions.
Upshot is that the wall will be removed entirely and we'll put in a new beam, floor will be replaced with a slab.
Now over to Con to do the structural stuff, then Daniel to do plans for the Building Permit application.

Gutted

Three days and five skips later...

What was the kitchen...

...the bathroom...

...the living area looking back up the hall...

... and the living area looking out into the courtyard.

Demolition Day

Late June turns into early July.
During June we move all the furniture from the back room to the front bedroom, removing the doors from the wardrobe so that the bed could slide in (just fitted). Amazingly, we managed to then move in the sofa, dining table, fridge, TV table.
Later we pack up everything in kitchen and bathroom into storage boxes which go into the second bedroom. We remove the laundry trough and handbasin as they might be recyclable in the new layout. We remove the glass panelled door from the end of the hall, which we plan to relocate in the second bedroom, and replace it with the flat panel door from the bathroom, which Peter modifies so that it can secure the front part of the house when the back is gutted.
During one of our forays into the house to prepare for demolition we notice first that the back gate is open, and secondly that the back sliding door is off its runner, and looks as though someone's tried to jemmy it open. Several days later we realise that the TV (second hand, bought via Gumtree) is no longer on its table in the front bedroom. We realise that the jemmy effort was in fact successful, that the thieves then carried off the TV, probably out the front door. Nothing else touched. We are annoyed because you can no longer buy 32" TVs, but otherwise the loss is too minor for us to be anything more than irritated, and cross with ourselves for not locking the place more securely.
By the first Monday in July we have done all we can in preparation, and the builders duly arrive at about 7:30am. The sounds of demolition float over the wall as we drink our morning coffee and try to recover from getting out of bed at 6:30am on a very chilly winter's morning.

Conference

When we return from our usual summer sailing in Hobart, we organise a meeting with Daniel (architect), Con (structural engineer), Tony and Dave (builders) to work out how best to deal with the bit of wall that we want to remove from the living area. To make it easier to see what's what, we spend a happy day wrecking the cupboard that once held the hot water service in the bathroom. What we find is not promising - no steel beam supporting the existing opening.
When the experts arrive, they confirm that the old opening was created by bolting two slim wooden beams on either side of the old brick wall at the level of the top of the opening, then removing all the brickwork below. Con the engineer confirms that if we re-arrange this at all, it will not pass current regulations. We all stand and ponder for a bit, then Tony suggests that we put a single steel pillar at the end of the current opening, and then insert a new steel beam to support a new opening from there to the outside wall. Con confirms that this is possible, and we feel that a pillar in the middle of the room could be made into a feature, rather than a bug.
We agree that the next step will be to demolish most of the internals at the back, so that Daniel and Con can really see what's under the floor and above the ceiling. The bad news is that Dave and Tony tell us that they are booked until late June, so there will be another pause before anything happens.

Meanwhile...

The architect comes, measures up, and is, we hope, currently drawing up plans.
Peter covers over the hole in the floor with mdf and sheets of masonite, and with a rug from the market over the top, the living room looks reasonably habitable.
We are giving up a storage area we've rented for years, and shelves from it are relocated in the second bedroom, giving us a place for the assorted tools that are living in there at present.
We acquire a single bed mattress, which will one day have a bed to go with it in the second bedroom.
After weeks of wet and windy weather, the old climbing rose blows down from the wall. We decide to seize the opportunity to render the newly-straightened wall. Our builders give us the contact for the guys who did the rendering of our renovation, and they are due tomorrow to do the wall. The rose has been cut right back to a mere three old stems, but I'm sure it will grow again. It was overdue for pruning, but it was so high up the wall it was almost impossible to do. So much easier with it lying on the ground!

Renderers come, and render, returning a few days later to do the top coat. Wall looks great, and the rose will be re-attached.

Straightening up the wall

Ready....

Mainmark sends Christian to do a "services location". While he is taking a phone call, we do a bit of digging and by sheer good luck strike the inspection port for the stormwater, which means Christian can put his magic camera doodah down the drain and find out exactly where it goes. With a bit more help from us he finds that the water for our house runs along the wall of 1A Little O'Grady Street (bad news), but the stormwater drain for our house is located about 400mm from the wall (good news).
He also assists with a bit of sewer investigation - we learn that the sewer is deep, probably about 1.6 metres down. We think this makes a new connection from 1A Little O'Grady possible.

Set...

Mainmark suggested that we cut through the brick wall between our place and 1A Little O'Grady Street, just beyond the back of that house, so that when they try to push the side wall back into its proper position, it isn't restricted by the garden wall to which it is attached. After getting a scary quote from a tradesman who was going to make two cuts, take out the bricks in between, and build pillars so we could hang a gate, we go for the simpler approach. Peter rings Profast, and they come by today and cut one neat slot just past the end of the house, in about an hour all up. Job done.

And then there's the inside story

We have to provide access to the wall on both sides. Which means taking up some floorboards in the lounge of 1A Little O'Grady Street. Which means chipping up the horrible 1970s mission brown tiles. Helen has a nice time with a hammer and cold chisel getting that done a day or so ago, creating a tile-free area about 400mm out from the wall. This exercise confirms what we have believed for a while, that the tiles are on a cement bed on an old timber floor, rather than on a slab. Today Peter buys a nice new crowbar at Bunnings, with which he attacks the cement, and the wire mesh under the cement. One floor board now cleared and removed, probably two more to go. Now also confirmed that the floorboards are rotten, full of borer, and not worth saving. Which makes the job of ripping up the floor simpler.

Peter spends another session with the crowbar, and together we clear up the mess of tiles, cement, aluminium mesh and plastic that the wrecking exercise creates. We now have a three floorboard wide hole. And a pile of rubble and borer-infested wood in the courtyard. And dust. A lot of dust.

GO!

Wall day arrives. We are up at 6:30am (what!!?) carpenters arrive at 7am to set up their props in our garden and to make holes in the floor. Which we've already done, because we thought it was our job. They are impressed with the wholesale removal of the floorboards. At 8am, the Mainmark boys turn up, but nothing much happens for the next hour or so because the supervisor is flying in from Wagga. Once he gets there they insert all the tubes, connect up the pressure pumps and start pumping goop in under the wall. This slowly fills up soil cavities, compresses the soil and eventually creates a stable foundation. Initially most of the goop just comes under the wall and finishes up in our garden, but after a bit of relocation of tubes all goes well for a while. The sides of the cut in the wall then jam, and some of the bricks at the top have to be hammered out before the wall is free to move. By the time they finish it isn't completely straight, but the gap between wall and ceiling is much smaller, and the expert thinks the walls been pushed as far as the rest of the house will stand.

So now we're ready for the next step - getting some plans drawn.

Before

Props outside

Injection, inside

More injection

Foam coming up on the garden side

Parallel projects, post-trip

We return from Europe in late August, and start on parallel projects.
We have our first booking from friends who want to stay in late September, so we need to have the house liveable by then. That's Project One.
At the same time, we want to get the renovation project underway: Project Two.
Lists are made.

Thank you IKEA

For Project One, it's an inventory of what's in the house, and what should be but isn't. Nick has left a few things that are duplicated in his new life, and there is also a collection of stuff that dates back to our time when it was our office. So there is a comfortable couch, two easy chairs that convert to beds, two office chairs, a TV table (but no TV) a kettle or two, cutlery, crockery, some cooking gear and a bar fridge. There is also a small dining table, on semi-permanent loan from one of our colleagues from the Computer Forensic Team days.
Major gaps in the inventory are filled by a couple of expeditions to IKEA, a couple to Bunnings, a couple to the Good Guys, and a lucky find on GumTree of a 37" TV (no longer available new, but just the right size for the space occupied by the TV table). After that there is much work on flat-pack assembly as we construct a bed and two bedside tables, and a set of portable shelves that will fit in the wardrobe in the bedroom.
By the time our friends arrive the house boasts a queen bed with electric blanket and bedlamps, nice linen and towels, a coffee machine, microwave, toaster, TV, CD/DVD player/recorder, hair dryer, iron and ironing board in addition to the furniture already in place. Our friends confirm that the place is now comfortable and enjoy their stay.
We feel that we've moved it from half a star to about 1.5 stars. To get it further up the scale we need to make progress on Project Two.

When not crawling round on the floor saying "Pass the allen key" to one another, we are making phone calls and sending emails to get Project Two going. Before we went away, our builders came and confirmed what we feared, that we would have to begin by straightening the side wall. It's been leaning toward the Finlay Street back garden for several decades (half a century?). We had it looked at from our side some time back, and when assured that it wasn't going to fall down, or even lean further, decided to leave it alone. However from the inside, one is aware of a significant gap between the ceiling and the top of the wall, large enough to admit rain and even a modest quantity of leaves from time to time. We get the experts back in, and make an arrangement to have a wall-straightening exercise done in October.
After much discussion between us, we reach agreement on the best place for a relocated bathroom. Deciding to move it is a no-brainer as it presently occupies prime real estate in the corner of the living area, and is as far from the bedrooms as you can get without going outside. We settle on sacrificing about half the second bedroom, leaving just enough room for a single bed or bunks, and a small desk. The question is then whether there will be any significant issues associated with moving the plumbing. The loo is currently situated on the back wall. From there the sewerage pipe goes across the back of the house to link up with an old outside dunny built on the back, which still has the original Federation pan and cistern in place, and, we think, still connected. The roof and door of this outhouse have collapsed, and it's full of earth and leaves, so we clean all this out and dump the rubbish in a convenient skip, with the permission of the friendly builders working over the road. The plumber who lives a few doors down kindly comes for a look at the present and planned future arrangements, and tells us he can see no barriers to a bathroom relocation - we can either take a pipe under the floor to the existing trap, thereby lengthening the sewer line by about 6 metres, or we can take a new line straight out under the side wall and join it to the sewer line that it shares with our house (so convenient to own both, as this will involve digging a largeish hole in our lawn).
Last but not least, we re-establish contact with the builder and architect. The builder is coming to cut through the brick wall where the side wall of the house becomes a boundary fence, a pre-requisite for the wall-straightening. The architect is coming late next week or early the following week to talk plans.
We're underway.