Building the Base

Tuesday 2 November 2010

We got back to the land on Tuesday, after Tropi had a trip out with Pauline on Monday. 

Moving on from stone blocks, we're now into building the shed base.  We want this to be insulated, with straw-clay, so we have to build it upside down, initially, to fix a plywood base, and then 'flip' it over (heavy, heavy, heavy) once it's made.

 Dave screwed in all the joists, and then I got a go with the hammer.  We used the short galvanised nails that you can't get in Greece, that George located in England, but they arrived too late, and Jim had to send them on.  These are nails with history. 




 Me getting on with the nailing, using the decking as a work bench - that tree is going to be lucky to last till Christmas!








After the nailing, we realised we'd forgotten to get any protective wood stain, which we needed for the plywood, before fixing on the mud sills (decking planks to raise the plywood off the stone blocks).  But luckily we had a few scrapings in the bottom of a tin from when we were doing the generator box.  So we set about painting the base in entirely the wrong way - from the outside in, not knowing how long the wood stain would last.

This led to some interesting gymnastics, but the stain lasted well, and and we were just beginning to hope it would go the distance ...

 ... when it ran out.  Honestly!

Luckily Pauline had brought essential supplies of wheat-free biscuits (take note, potential visitors) so we were able to assuage our sorrows in comfort food ...

... before walking up to the Corner of Doom to see if there were any developments.  Which there were - the wall had been extended and infilled, and the road is passable again - although we're not going to risk being trapped by wet concrete, so we're still not using it.