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!