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.