pier today…

[old entrance gate brick piers]

The old brick piers at the entrance to the drive are being taken down to be replaced with new piers and new entrance gates.  The gate design is an abstract pattern of the mews elevations (and wedding ring design) and will house the letter boxes.

down to earth

All of the foundations to the existing buildings have now been removed from the mews, leaving nothing but earth.

and… of course… it’s been raining…

revealing the layers

Here are just a few photos from the building site…

This is where our house once stood….

You can see that they have removed most of the footings to the old building.

And here there are some of the old cobblestones that have been revealed…

And a few of the piles being made from the demolished buildings…

demolition continues

Demolition is continuing, and now the house and studio buildings have no roof or first floor.  The garage building has almost been entirely demolished.

This weekend a good friend picked up the bath and washstand.  We’re really glad that it will be going to a nice new home, and will not just end up in the skip…  We had to remove the cast iron feet from the bath, but it managed to fit into the back of his car.

The mews looks the biggest it has done since we’ve lived there, and one can get a real appreciation for the new space we are creating.

brick by brick

Demolition has commenced.  The existing studio and store building, has nearly been reduced to neat piles of London Stock bricks – ready to be recycled and re-used elsewhere.

Most of the brickwork has been easy to take down by hand – especially the store building.  It was over 100 years old in places, and in a terrible state of repair.

We are glad that the material from the demolition will be re-used as much as possible, if not on our build but somewhere else.

We also have this to be incorporated into the new build or to be recycled.  The safe was made in about 1850 by the same company who built the safes on HMS Titanic.  And we still have the key to it…