Demolitions starts!
Sunday, April 1st: The first job that needs to be done is to demolish the existing toilet. This needs to be done quite carefully as I want to reuse as many bricks as I can.
The clay tiles are removed and stacked in the corner.
The tile battons and roof joists are removed.
Then the bricks are carefully removed.
Sometimes I used a bolster chisel. Sometimes I thumped a row of bricks with a lump hammer using a large piece of timber to prevent breaking the bricks.
It was rather hot for the time of the year!
The window has been taken out.
It's a real challenge to clean the bricks and many have been broken. The bricks seem to be very fragile and have quite a few kiln cracks as part of their design making them quite difficult to clean without breaking them.
What rubble I create will be used as the base to the floor slab.
Monday, 2nd April: Phew, nearly done!
Down to the foundation bricks now. I've lost many bricks because they seem to have the consistency of biscuits meaning they break easily.
Tuesday, 3rd April: The last of the walls have been taken down and I've started to hack at the floor.
Surprise, surprise! After I started to use a sledge hammer to break up the concrete floor I discovered an old cast iron pipe!
Was this the mains water pipe to the house? It couldn't be as it was too high.
After a bit of careful digging I discovered that the pipe had been disconnected and broken when the toilet was originally built in 1932 and was now full of soil.
A bit more hacking and the floor is beginning to disappear.
I'm keeping all the rubble for the time being as I will probably need to use it as the base of the floor slab.