Gone

After the excitment of Demo day, the next 3 days were spent by Mark from Preferred Demolition clearing away the rubble that used to constitute our family home. After seeing the mess at the end of Day 1, it was really incredible to check back and see how much clearing had been done by the end of each day. It's not like everything was simply picked up and taken away either. A lot of time was spent by Mark sorting out the rubble, putting things into specific piles to be recycled, salvaged or disposed of as appropriate. Watching a big excavator pick up a dainty pipe separate from the rest of the rubble around it really demonstrates the skills of the operator and I can tell you Mark is a gun operator!

Not only does Mark operate the excavator, but after he loads the truck, he then hops out and drives that away, comes back and hops back into the excavator and does it all again. As a single operator, we didn't think it would be possible for him to clear away as much material as he did in a day but he's a hard, careful, efficient and skilled worker and just got on with the job each day. He even managed to carefully remove some trees that were right on the property boundary, hard against our neighbours driveway and very close to our electricity pillar, without any damage, which I didn't think he'd be able to do. 

After 3.5 days of sorting, loading, dumping, raking and clearing, our block is now a raked sandpit with a fenced off pool shell and a few things tucked along the back fence all ready for its exciting next stage. If you are looking for a demo company to handle your demolition, I would not hesitate at all to recommend Mark and Linda from Preferred Demolition and can't thank them enough for the level of professionalism and care shown in completing our job. 

DEMO DAY!!

May 3rd, 2022  - a day that saw a mixture of emtions as we watched our first family home reduced to rubble in a matter of a touch over 60 minutes. 

We got off to a normal start to our day with the digger not expected to site until mid-late morning. So the kids went to school with Amanda and I started work from home. We then got a text from the demo company mid morning advising the digger will arrive around 11 and it will get straight into demolishing the house shortly after that.

Amanda went and picked up the kids and I headed down to the house just after 11 to find the digger unloaded. I had a quick chat with Mark the operator while walking the site, then it was all systems go. Mark told me he'd go straight into the lounge due to lack of space on the lot, taking down most of the house before he started sorting the rubble into wood, metal, rubbish, etc.

He wasn't wrong. No sooner had he entered the digger and we were all ready, he punched the bucket of the digger straight through the front wall of the lounge, brought it out, punched it through the bay window and just like that the whole lounge room collapsed. From there, the digger kept making short work of walls, roof, air con ducting, tiling, wiring and whatever else stood in its way. 60 minutes later and 90% of our house is flattened. Video here: Our Demo

Imogen was a bit sad, Josh seemed excited and both Amanda and I had some mixed emotions, mostly excitment but a little bit of sadness to see our family home gone. Overall though, it's a necessary evil to enable us to build our dream home on our lovely block.

We left the crew from Preferred sorting out the rubble and took the kids back to school and I went back to work (from home). The photo on the right is how it looked at the end of the day 1. As you can see, it's a massive mess, there are a couple of small walls still standing and the team have started to sort the rubble into different piles.

Road to demo day

April has been a hectic month with all paths leading to demo day. We officially spent our last night in our existing house on April 8th, moving out on the 9th and things started moving very quickly indeed.

By the end of day on April 9th, we had moved a lot of our stuff into my old 2x1 unit, a place we're going to call home for the duration of the build, and the rest of it into either the back shed or mum and dad's games room (thanks both!). We enlisted the help of Rubix Removalists to assist with the move and they were great and I'd happily recommend their services.

That wasn't all though. April 9th also saw the house baited as per council requirements, light fittings beginning to be stripped from the ceiling (thanks Mike) and the power off to the property. We also removed the carpet from the front lounge as part of the move in the hopes to reuse it in the new house given it was less than a year old.

The next week or so was pretty much a blur with trying to cram our life into our 2x1, listing and selling stuff from the old house on gumtree and Facebook marketplace and many, many, many trips between the old house and our unit. 

It's been an eye opening experience salvaging stuff from the house - people will take/buy all sorts of stuff. We sold usual items like oven, cooktop, nice doors etc but also manage to sell the entire kitchen itself, our ensuite vanity and taps, plain internal doors, laundry sink, other random windows, the patio, split system air con, toilet systems and even the front door itself. In addition people took stuff that, in my view, were past their used by like broken curtains and window finishings, old light fittings, old taps and hose reels.

By April 19th, there wasn't much left of the house other than the bricks and roof tiles. Certainly the house could no longer be locked up, the water, power and gas were all removed and the sewer cut and shut ready for demo. 

The final piece of the puzzle was the pool - we are keeping the pool itself but will give it a major overhaul as part of the build so it required some demo too. The pool company started works on April 13th but the old pool wasn't going down without a fight. The concrete apron surrounding the pool proved to be very thick and resistant to cutting, jackhammering and sledge hammering. The pool guy took a few days at it, draining it at same time, before calling in the big guns - a bobcat and a mini excavator with a rock breaker. It took until today, May 2nd, to finally clear the old apron away from the pool. Just in time too because tomorrow is demo day!