Insulation

Next in house project is to insulate the back building on the outside. The width of the court allows us to do this, instead of losing space on the inside (which we've done on the rest of the house), the back building is only 3 metres wide. It also allows us to cover the very messy bricks of this part. The terrace had to be done first since the insulating foam and thin bricks that go on top will overlap the floor.

Pim finished the drains that come from the gutters, and he and his dad had to replace a couple of windowsills still, since they were not deep enough for what the new thickness of the wall will be.

Then Pim removed a layer of pieces of marble someone had attached to the bottom of the wall, washed the flaky paint (painting over moss is never gonna work, people) away with a Kärcher, and filled all gaps and largest unevenness with cement so that the insulation would glue to the wall properly. The insulation has guides to place the bricks, so they have to be placed level and correct (some bricks over windows etc go vertically), this is very important.

So lots of thinking, measuring, then finally cutting a gluing with a special cement glue.

The entire back is now covered in... polystyrene :D looks total class! We still have thinner insulation to glue to the edges of the windows, screw everything down, then glue the tile-bricks.

We can't wait to move on to work on the inside, the kitchen (!!!) and the dining room. We will have to, soon, due to the weather. We've already ordered the tiles for the floor :)

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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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