D-day, at last!

Awoken by the squeak of next door's gate at 7:30am. Yes, builders' trucks are outside. Fling ourselves into clothes and go out to see what is happening. Huge (40 ton) truck plus trailer parked in the side lane. Alan the amazing bobcat artist works all day. Bit by bit the mess is cleared from the back of Leigh's garden, then the sheds come down, then the concrete slab comes up, revealing, to everyone's surprise, floorboards underneath. They go as well, all picked up by the bobcat and dumped into the truck and trailer. By the end of the day, it is just bare earth.

Bobcat gets started

Alan departing with first load for landfill

Tony wields a seldgehammer

While the bob-cat is working, the guys take down the pergola at the back of our house, then start demolishing the short side wall between our two gardens. This is a recent erection with modern mortar, which takes a bit of serious bashing with a sledgehammer - boss builder Tony even takes a hand in the job. His workers get up on our roof and start on the side wall, reducing it to roof height - a much easier job as the old lime mortar gives up easily. All the bricks are chucked down to where the bob-cat is working and go into the truck with the rest.

"But I haven't done my hair"

Meanwhile, the electrician comes and sorts out a regime for providing power to the joint building site without cutting off the power from either the front of our house, or the garage. After a strengthening coffee we get to work to remove the light fittings, the skirtings and half the remaining kitchen cabinet from the back room. The last chair is slid down the passage and goes out into the car. Tony orders some flooring - a kind of cross between Masonite and chipboard with plastic tongue and groove sides which goes down to protect the tiled floor and the under-floor heating beneath.
While the builders have smoko, Leigh disinters a long-dead cat from his garden. The exercise is somewhat hampered by the fact that the bobcat is parked pretty much above the grave, so he can't finish until the end of the day.

Bobcat knocking down a shed

Pulling up a concrete slab

Tony arranges for a plumber to come at the end of the day to disconnect the taps from our sink and the gas from the stove. That done, stove is shifted into the passage and backed up against the door to inhibit access. Sink finishes up in the garden, taps saved in case we want to re-use. Final bits of cabinetry go into the rubbish pile. Back room now completely bare, ready for the roof to come off and walls to come down.

It's official

So far, so good. One day down, only another couple of hundred to go.