Finishing the terrace

Wow, it's been a while!

We did finish the terrace this summer. The most involved thing was to build the brick wall (it was Pim's first) and apply the grout (a laborious three man job: Pim, his dad and me). We chose a sand toned grout.

Putting on the floor was easier. Pim had already pre-prepared the substrate with garden earth and cement some time ago, and the rain and people walking over it for months hardened it considerably. Several centimetres of "river" sand (it appeared to be washed beach sand, with lots of shells in it!), packed well with a plate compactor we rented, a layer of bricks (I really enjoyed this fun and quick job!), some more sand and compacting, and it's done :) the most laborious part of this process was to cut the bricks around the angled edges, which Pim did with an angle grinder.

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More terrace

Some progress on the terrace:

First placing concrete L slabs to act as retainer wall for the soil beyond.

As level as possible. These things weigh 65 kg each.

Starting the brick wall, the first row is the most difficult.

Overnight, a cat will always come to your fresh concrete and walk over it.
This one however tap danced on it :D

More layers go faster.

Here come some stairs.

Garden

We haven't been working in the house for a while now. Taking advantage of longer days (although it's been pouring like crazy this spring), we've been working outside. The terrace is coming along.

Soil-cement as a base for concrete Ls to hold the ground

A cat left an imprint overnight

As matters stand today

Meanwhile, further back in the garden, I'm working on some paths,
using the same bricks that we will use on the terrace

Insulation & brick delivery

Woot!

Huge truck! way longer than our house is wide!

Terrace

Terrace coming soon!

Pim has been putting a stabilised sand floor (chape? screed?) as a base for the terrace. This is sand from the garden with some cement. He's reinforcing it with some wire meshes that are like mini-rebar. I'm sorry, our English building terminology is failing us hard here :)

All this underfloor is now delimited by a concrete and rubble (we're going Roman here) frame he poured to be the foundation of a future greenhouse/conservatory thing.

Brick floor soon!

May 2014, May 2016

Facebook prompted before & after, two years and two days:

The hillbilly roof protected our tomato crop for two years

Digging

Pim's been digging out the terrace. It's a lot to dig...

Today Pim's dad has also removed the add-on to the corner of the back building. We think that was there just to attach a door that is now long gone, we also found some evidence in the rubble (lots of rubble! this space was used as a dump) in the ground that Pim dug out. It wasn't really supporting anything. He then started reconstructing the corner.

Not kidding about the rubble, and this is only a fraction

Pim's also now trying different configurations for the stairs leading to the upper level. We of course make drawings, and plans in sketchup and stuff, but there's nothing like seeing it in place and going up the steps.

Dining room platform

We are still on a new window high! but new work has started in the kitchen-dining room. The dining room will be raised on a platform at the back of the room, due to the structure of the building and the incline of the terrain. It used to be a shed, divided from the rest of the structure by a wall, and higher up. All those walls are now gone but the raise remains, when everything is levelled up nicely, the difference will be 30 cm so we need two steps leading up from the kitchen.

Pim's dad started building the steps with recycled bricks, I thought he went incredibly fast!

The gaps will be filled with cement and rubble (boy don't we have rubble), and then the floor evened out with a runny cement mix. Then tiles, but not before the walls and their corresponding mess are done.

Pim has still been digging the terrace outside, and I could barely move due to my sciatica flaring up, but managed to shuffle around some pots and seeds now that spring is here.

Kitchen window post

This post was a long way coming. Since I have a lot of images to post, I have been experimenting with some code added to the blogger template in order to have galleries to display the images. It is very clunky but it does the job. I should seriously consider importing this blog into my main website blog, but I have to think how and if I'd still like to keep it more separated.

Meanwhile, let us continue.

It has been cold, wet, and miserable. January and February are not pleasant to work around outside here. Luckily Pim and his father do not seem to mind too much, I have bad joints and I just can't work in these conditions, so besides a coat of paint in a small surface while wearing a Peruvian oversize pullover (what a wuss right?) I have done nothing of this project until the windows were in. By March however I have started gardening ;P

In the gallery below we pick up where we left in the last post:

• Sliding door beam concrete-d, bricks removed, edges redone. First time we can really see some of the garden from the house. In this case, a big pile of bricks :D
• Dining room window (where the shed door used to be) beam placed and concrete-d, bricks removed to widen, bricks added to make door into window, edges redone.
• Bit of wall where the radiator goes gets painted, green of course, and the radiator put up (it was in the way, this is one very large and 100 kg heavy motherfucker).
• Existing door widened, some bricks added between the pre-existing door and window for a stronger structure.
• Existing window narrowed and lowered to be as low as the kitchen counter.
• Outer windowsill stones (Belgian blue sandstone) placed. Some of these are very heavy... unlike other windowsills in the house, we had them delivered, but Pim and his dad installed them. I was able to help moving a couple ;P
• Threshold stones placed, same as above.
• After some delay, windows, door and sliding door/window? placed by the window guys today!
• And now PHEW!

And now, onto other kitchen things... walls, floor, insulation...

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