Insulation II

I realise I never posted about the "finished" result of the insulation of the back building. I say "finished", because we consider it finished for the time being (and we stopped working on it about mid November). The insulation is on, the bricks are on, all gaps are closed, the gutters are on, and this is going to be all for the winter. There is still grouting between the bricks to do, but that will be a summer project. We're now moving on to the inside of the building.

So this is the "finished" result:

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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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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.