The in between bit

The wasteland between our new living room and the rest of the house is finally taking shape.

After the loo was knocked out and the pipes removed, it looked like this.




With a lot of hard graft, it has now been transformed to a working utility room and a cellar ( OK, I know it's not under ground, but it has no windows and a wine rack, so we call it the cellar).



The floor is Vietnamese marble, which was a nice price, and looks right for the age of the house, but it was a sod to grout, as little tiles means lots of joints. Tina was well 'grouted out' by the end of it.

We were uming and ahing about what door to put on the cellar. A hand built one by Mr Chattilon would run to about €600, so we looked at getting a shop built pine door, which would have cost about €100. Mr H, our builder friend, persuaded me that I could build one myself, so I gave it a go. It was tricky to rebate the door frame, and the gaps where the boards meet are a bit more visible than on Mr Chatilons doors, but then he has been making them for 40 years. For a first attempt, we were very pleased.



The only other problem was getting door furniture, as my timber yard could only supply boards that were 22mm thick, and most doors are 30mm, so no locks would fit, but we got one in the end. When I make the doors for the rest of the house I will have to get hold of some thicker timber so they look the same as the others.

The units all went together OK with no bits missing, which is good for IKEA, but we will have to see how lucky we are with the kitchen. I had a bit of fun with the plumbing, as one of the flexible pipes that they use to connect the taps was nice and waterproof when it was straight, but not so good when you tried to do the flexible bit.



We've also got the washing machine installed now, with no leaks (touch wood) although there was some fun in the bathroom, where I cut down the old waste pipe for the washing machine, but decided to have a shave before I went to get the plastic cap to block it off. When I emptied the sink, a fountain of stubbly water shot out of the old pipe. Never interrupt plumbing for personal hygiene!

What we've been up to while we haven't updated the blog

Once again it has been a long time since we updated this, as we have been working hard and not got round to typing.

We've extended the patio around both sides of the pool now, which make it look even bigger. Mum and dad helped to prepare the ground work while they were over, and Tina and I did all the concreting and slabbing. This time I tried laying the slabs directly onto concrete, rather than concrete with a mortar layer on top.






This radical new method is popular in Italy, where they will lay tiles directly onto a wet concrete floor, but that wasn't why I chose this method, I just bought the wrong type of sand at the builders merchants ( problems in translation).



It proved to be a bit faster, in some ways, as you only have to mix one layer, but it is also more difficult to get level, due to the big bits of gravel in the concrete mix. I think next year, when we do the bottom end of the pool, I will go back to the traditional way, and leave the new method to the Italians.








It looks like it's finished in this picture, but you can't see the mud at the other end. We will have to wait until next year until it settles down, so that it is stable enough to build on. Last week, as it has been so dry over here this month, we had big cracks appear along all of the trenches that we had filled in, a bit like a 1970's Charlton Heston movie. No other seismic activity to report.