OB Project - "New vs Old" - Nedlands, WA

There will be an external louvre system.

Here is a before picture from the street
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and the back yard......
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And here is what we imagine our house to hopefully look like from the rear. We will keeping the front of the house as is other than restoration.
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And so the adventure begins.......................

First task: Tree removal.
Unfortunately we needed to remove several very large trees which were located on our future slab position.
Shop around as quotes varied by as much as 100%!!
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Our initial plan was to keep the original single garage as this would keep the front of the home looking original and also allow for the addition of a double carport - as per council requirements.
However it became evident that the garage required either required bracing or demolition to allow mini excavators through it.
See our attempt to brace the rear wall with pine.
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My first OB lesson: Listen to your gut!!
Prior to bracing the garage I felt that demolition would be a better solution. That said I decided to attempt to brace it. - Lets just say that I changed my mind as soon as the job was complete and ordered it to be demolished. Ouch!!
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Following

Its an iceberg!!

I chose to have the earthworks guys remove the roots rather than have a stump grind as all that would do is spread mulch under the slab.
First of three large roots to remove. I stayed on site all day for this task making sure ALL the roots were removed.

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The trees are all gone and the site looks a little sad - unfortunately most of the trees were in a really bad condition (rotten) or were within our future slab location. We will lose lots of birds but hopefully some will return once landscaping is done.

This will make sure we won't stay cold this winter!! I think I seriously underestimated how much firewood would be left on site. I'll need to find a new location for firewood soon.
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Apart from the firewood I was also able to keep a large amount of Silky oak which I intend to turn at some stage. - might have to wait until the house is finished.

Next stop.... Partial demolition and soil stabilisation.

Our Concreter has been booked in to the 7th of September Finally after many months of red tape and many other complications we are having good progress. I truly felt that our project wouldn't even get started so I'm currently on a massive high.
Still negotiating with bricklayers. I can't believe current prices are $1.40 plus gst!!!! That is at least 30% more than I'd budgeted for

Nope... it doesn't include anything. In fact the second storey is charged at $1.50 per brick. I've read here some of the OBs have managed to find much lower rates. Ive had no such luck. I also don't want to sacrifice accuracy as my doors and windows will be retrofit so walls and openings need to be accurate.

Atleast the second floor is now timber.

Demolition complete!! Not much left of the house.
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Next step was to stabilise the soil under the original footings.

The original house is set on limestone footings which are in reasonable condition, however as we intend to drop the floor level by about 1.4m into the addition the new slab will be well below the existing footings. Step one is to stabilise the soil with chemical grout injection to a depth of about 1m. We will later reinforce this with a cavity fill wall also.
The grout takes 3 days to start to harden and can be shaved into your desired shape in about 5-7 days. It reaches max strength in about 1 month.

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The above picture shows injection points set approx 200mm apart.

Good pick up!!
Yes, I'm glad we knocked it over. Also access would have been a nightmare.