Demolition Day

Day 1 for the builders it may be, but we've been waiting a year for this moment. Twelve months have passed since we decided to buy Carnhill and extend it. The extension has turned into a refurbishment, remodelling, roof heightening, landscaping and all manner of improvements taking our original budget estimation of £50K - £100K and multiplying it by a factor or three!



Demolition
The builders set about their task by not exactly building anything. Instead, they set their sights on demoilishing anything that was going to get in their way. First task? Remove the roof. Second task? Demolish the garage so that the heavy plant can get access to the rear of the property in order to start the digging of foundations.

The result wasn't as shocking as I was expecting (though I do feel sorry for the neighbours who may have had to suffer quite a noisy day).

It's amazing what a squad of hard-working individuals can get through in a day! And when I say squad, I mean squad... the cul-de-sac had its first ever traffic jam this morning when van after van turned up.

Grafitti
Of course, now that the house is officially a building site, it will attract the unsavioury elements in our society. In fact, they turned up last week to leave their mark on the empty shell.

The scrawls on the windows gave away their political persuasion:

"We run this show"
"Keep out"
"FTPSNI"
"FTUDA"
"FTUVF"

Lovely language, but it is a miracle that they didn't provide us with this poetry before now! The house has been empty for over 2 years after all. Ah well... the windows will be removed soon enough.