Walls, En-suites and doors

More progress. The plasters continue to ply their trade with many finishing off tasks. The tile layer has been laying tiles in the main en-suite. These are the tiles that we had so much anxiety over. We have been rather bold and daring with the design, and so far we are both happy with the outcome. I will post some more pictures of this bathroom tomorrow when more progress will have been made.

The kitchen will be delivered next Friday, so it is imperative that the front and back door are sanded and lacquered and re-located before then. I have spent some time this week working on the front door. One side is complete, and the easier back-side will be completed on Friday. The back door will just get a touch up. The front door is a lovely oak structure which just need some TLC to give it a longer life.

The natural stone wall will be attacked again on Saturday. The pointing is not difficult, but it is time consuming.

If the sun is shining on Friday I will apply the bitumen to the garage roof. This task, I have been putting off for a while, but now the weather is turning, I need to get it done.

More pics tomorrow...

A day late, but here it is..

Saturday was a day when we had the house to ourselves. I headed in early to build some natural stones back into the great wall and start preparing the surface for the final task of joint filling. Now anyone would think cementing some local rough stone into three cavities would be straight forward...right????? WRONG. First up you need to get the correct colour for the cement. This entailed driving to the local supplier in the pouring rain and then having to shovel it myslef into 5 large buckets. From there it was off to another location some 15 kms away to pick up some local sand. Easy right????? Wrong. This sand I had to sieve and bag myself.

So back to the wall. I was soon into the swing of things with the natural stones and old bricks soon in place. This took the best part of 4 hours. Reggie turned up with Raphael to help on the wall. This was fun as Raphael really enjoys the dirty stuff. In the afternoon Raphael went off to visit Christoph his uncle. This allowed us the finish preparing the wall. We called it a day with the task complete at 7.00pm. Where did those 11 hours go?

An update on the jacuzzi. We have a lovely location for the jacuzzi, between the chicken house and the workshop. We have also found one for sale second hand. Today I took the 2.5 hour drive to go and view it. This turned into a 9 hour round trip. The good news is that the product is just perfect. We now need to work out how to get it to Tenniken from Geneva. We also need to plan on laying a slab to support it. Work Work Work.

New stairs, and more rooms completed

Today was another action filled day. The trench is all but filled and new concrete is in place. The elements were certainly against any outside work today with rain squalls.

Reggie learnt a valuable lesson today when taking photographs...do not step backwards into a freshly plastered wall.

The electricians have been preparing each socket ready to accept the final covers. We had some final discussions about placement of some sockets, but nothing major.

The plasterers are applying finishing touches, and the bedrooms and office are now ready to paint. We can now plan a date for the painting party.

The new stairs are now in place and they look great. The treads are only temporary and will be replaced as one of the final tasks.

The workshop stairs are also in place, and will really allow easy access to the first floor. Even though we have a large house, the storage space will be ideal for camping equipment and the like.

Tomorrow family Harrison get the house to ourselves, and we will busy ourselves with working on the stone wall or laying tiles in the laundry.

Harmony at work

Today we had 4 plasterers, 1 tile layer. 2 stair builders, 1 architect plus 1 assistant, 1 stone mason and a pipe fitter. Not to mention Reggie Raphael and myself all working in the house. Yes it is that time when things are being finished. The office and master bedroom are ready for painting, the tiles are complete in Raphaels' bathroom, and the walls are complete in the guest bathroom.

All ceilings are now in place, and the plasters are busy finishing the walls. Tonight I spent a few hours in the kitchen cleaning the old mortar away from the old stone wall. Some of this wall will be exposed but other parts will be plastered.

After lunch today the main spine of the new stairs was delivered, and will be installed tomorrow. This will then allow the carpenters to build the walls and door for the second floor.

Tomorrow we have a control meeting with the electrician to ensure that we have not missed anything.

We are busy searching for heated towel rails for each bathroom, as well as the glass shower screens. There is one other piece of bathroom furniture that we require. That is the unit to support the sink in the main en-suite. The tiles do not arrive for 2 more weeks, so we are not concerned.

We must say that the workers in the house really work well together. Let's hope this continues until we finish.

Beams and beaming smiles

No post for a couple of days, so here is an update. The trench work is almost complete with the village heating system connected, the new sewerage line in place and the telephone and electricity cables in place. We will be happy to see this task completed so that the neighbor is no longer impacted.

The plasterers have attached glass foam tiles to the corridor wall which adjoins the cow stall. This was an necessary thing to do, as saltpeter would continually leach through the wall. This impermeable membrane will stop this completely.

The spaces between the beams are now being expertly filled in with plaster board. This looks great, and we are happy with the result.

The tile layer has completed tiling the walls in the guest and Raphaels' bathroom. He will start tiling the kitchen and corridor over the coming days.

Reggie and myself have not been enjoying a spectator sport. We are still busy purchasing items for the bathrooms, and following up on detail.

The great wall of Reggie is now fully pointed. This task has taking some 24 man hours to complete. The render might appear various colors, but we will be applying whitewash to the wall.

The next huge task for us two is the pointing between the natural stones which run up the staircase to the first floor. We have tried all along to expose elements of the old farmhouse, sometimes to the chagrin of the architect who we sometimes feel would like everything sharp, modern and white.

We are currently undertaking the project of sourcing a jacuzzi. We have worked hard on our budget to make savings, and we feel that this is our reward.

Off to shower now and to rest weary bones.

Work on a Sunday...no, just having fun

A quiet weekend for us with not much progress to report in the house. We had some stone steps removed from the garden, which now allows us a much cleaner lawn area. We back-filled the holes left by stone removal with soil from the jacuzzi area. Yes the dream still lives.

Today, (dare I say Sunday) we decided to carry out a couple of tasks related to the fireplace. The fireplace was built some months ago, and since then the plasterer has been finishing around the fireplace. The problem that has arisen, is that the air vent covers do not fit correctly now, and we had to do some work to get them to fit. We also wanted to move the main cast iron feature door upwards about 10cm from its current position. This is one of the cast iron doors that we rescued from the old farmhouse oven. It is just lovely. Another task was to cut another hole to accept one of the smaller cast iron doors that also came from the old oven. A couple of weeks back, I was seduced into buying a lovely vibrating cutting machine. I tried it out in ernest today, and it was faultless. The new large door is now repositioned, and a new opening has been created for the smaller door...job done.

This coming week should see the completion of the plastering or very close, and more tiling happening. The second set of stairs should be in place on Tuesday, and I should be able to built the glass brick wall.

We are now making plans for a painting party.......watch this space.

Wall, tiles....

At last some tiles have been laid. The great event has taken place in Raphaels' bathroom, and they look pretty good. The tile layer has been preparing each bathroom for the past few days. This task involved building the walls for the toilet mechanisms and preparing the showers and draining slots.

Another piece of progress has been the construction of the main en-suite wall, and frame. This frame will house the glass block wall, which we will construct next week. Before we can build the glass into place, we need to take delivery of the new stairs. Once these stairs are in place we can bring the bath down from the floor above. The bath will then be lifted through the frame into the en-suite, as it is too large to go through the doors.

Following on from the cleaning out of the chicken shed, today we had a couple of tree stumps removed. I asked the trench digger to pop around and do the business. He also took out some garden steps. There are certainly some interesting carved stones in that pile to be explored, as some have numbers carved on them.