More Demolition

Having finished knocking down the old extension, the next step was to knock down the back wall of the house. This is slightly more tricky because it holds up the roof, and it is imperative that the roof does not collapse. So I built a wooden structure tight against the inside wall of the house - here is the frame round the back door:



And here is the structure in what used to be our livingroom:



And there is some more timber in the bathroom, and some acro props holding up a bit of it too, shown here after the wall was removed, but obviously installed beforehand:



So, once all that was in place the wall was taken down, stone by stone, from the top. It is really easy to do, levering it apart with a crowbar. The mortar in these old stone walls is not at all like modern mortar! But, of course, you can build stone walls without any mortar at all... and it hasn't fallen down for 300 years, so it must have been okay.

Here is what the house looks like now - what you can see is the back of the plasterboard skin that makes the internal wall of the house, along with various bits of wiring, plumbing etc:



This is what the wall now looks like:



I'm hoping my neighbour will use all that up landscaping his garden, but there is an awful lot of stone there... rockery anyone?

This is what I have got to keep the rain off, it isn't much but actually the overhang of the roof does a pretty good job of keeping it dry anyway:



And finally, although I don't let the children play in the building site, there isn't much I can do about the chickens, and they do appreciate a bit of nice dry dust on a sunny day. Here is an action shot of Wormy and Chocolate dust bathing on top of what remained of the wall at that point - alas for the chickens, even that bit is now gone.