"D" week

It's a very exciting week at my house. "Demolition" week. My builder will be here in the next day or so to begin. He's already been here several times, so we've worked out our game plan of what has to happen first.

There are quite a few thick concrete slabs to go, so he's bringing in a concrete cutter to assist, as a jack hammer is not strong enough.

The past 2 weekends, I've been indulging in some preliminary demolition myself and have been chipping bricks, cleaning off mortar and jack hammering some of the smaller slabs.

It's actually been quite invigorating for me, to know that I'm doing something for myself.

Can you hear Frank Sinatra singing "I'll do it my way"?

I am putting an extension onto the back of my existing house and then doing some renovation work inside. The house is a post war, red brick. I love the red brick with the white contrast timber work. It's a style more commonly found in the southern states than here in Brisbane.

There are several features that I love such as this lattice effect with the bricks that creates a gorgeous screen wall and on a balmy summer night looks amazing with candles twinkling amongst the jasmine.

The new exterior will feature a lot of dark and charcoal colours. I'd previously had these 400mm sq pavers laid else where, but have stacked them for future use after the extension.

The new external colour test patch on the fence- Dulux Domino.

A pile of the cleaned bricks that we may use to patch window holes. They will be rendered over, so I don't need to worry about colour matching them. Whatever doesn't get used will possibly later be used for some crazy paving in the landscaping.

As the demolition progresses I'll be taking heaps of photos to show the progress the whole way.