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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