It's a Wrap

Monday 31 December 2012

So here we are, at the end of the year.  Lots achieved, lots more to do.  Overjoyed that the build finally progressed as far as it did this year, only a roof covering away from being all under our own steam.  Hmm, 'steam-powered' just about sums us up.  It won't be a quick process, but as long as we don't try to do too much.  It's amazing how plodding along gets things done.

So a big wish to all our families and friends for health and happiness in 2013 and beyond, and anyone feeling fit who fancies some time in Greece - there's accommodation and food waiting here for you, and lots of good old-fashioned outdoor work!

Dave and I getting squishy in the bedroom!

Sanding the foundation beam

then treating it with preservative.

Notso pretty well recovered, sunbathing with Astro.

We're going to fire up the generator for hot water soon, to get ourselves scrubbed up for partying.  We will put the chickens in their pen early, feed the cats, and then move Sid and his kennel and his biscuits and everything else down to the quay, where Pete and Ed have brought the boat in.  We're all eating in Mamma Mia's tonight, after a bit of a crawl to wish happy New Year to Savvas and Adonis at Elite, and Kyriakos and Nea at New Byblos.  Then we'll stay overnight on Pete's boat, as ours is just a bit cold and damp for this time of year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Love to you all

Around the site

Sunday 30 December 2012

This is how our new view looks, from the decking, lots more sea to see.  It will fill back in as the olive trees grow, it feels a bit exposed as it is.

 Lots of logs from one of the pruned branches.  Loads more to do!

One of our house corners, showing how the damp is discolouring the wood, we urgently need dry days to treat the structure against damp and termites.

 Under the eaves - the view along the front of the house, looking east.  Very much a building site.  The extended roof will go over the glass-house trombe wall, all in due course.  We have the roof before the foundations in that location, definitely starting the wrong way up.

We enjoyed our Christmas Day walk with Sid so much, we did it again on Sunday, this time with the camera.

Even if Robbie and Sue are in Cambodia, we have our very own Ankor Wot? closer to home.  Dave showing his strength

Sid in a mountain pond

Pontoon atmospherics

29 Dec

Walking Sid along the sea front, before meeting Pete and Ed, we called in on Tropi, to empty her bucket (rain water coming in over the companionway somewhere, and no time to find it) and check her lines.  Some amazing sky effects were happening.  Look at the pontoon bridge in top photo - inspires confidence, doesn't it?

Sid was very pleased to see Pete and Ed, but not particularly bothered about being left with us.  Oops!

Pressed Olives

29 December 2012

We took our three bulging sacks of olives up to the little press in Vournikas on Friday 28th, just to find the place deserted.  Eventually I found a helpful lady who said they'd be working again tomorrow, and we could leave the sacks and our container and come back tomorrow.  So on Saturday off we went to the press, which was bustling with activity this time, and collected our canister.  It is a 25 litre container, so we reckoned we have about 13 to 14 litres.  Two years ago we collected 2 sacksful, for 9 litres, and paid 10 euros.  This time we didn't have to pay, which means he took his 13% cut for the press, so probably we collected about 16 litres of olives.  Not bad for a half-harvest, started late, with hardly any nets.  Should be enough for a year and a half.

Moving on

Saturday 29 Dec 2012

The Winnebago kids are all moved out.  The decking is nearly dismantled, and the fences are down.  It's a bit strange, being alone here at night, and we're having to run around after the chickens a lot more, now there's no Alison to phone when we get stuck in a bar in the evening.

This is the photo we're not to show Pete, Dave's brother.  He and Edna are arriving back from the UK today, but they've asked if we can keep the dog another day or so, until they bring the boat over for new year.  Sid has been completely spoiled by us, and now expects to have the sofa all to himself. 

All Raftered Up

Friday 28 Dec 2012

The final push to finish the rafters - all were notched and in position, all carefully measured and angled.  The workers arrived at 0800 to make up for lost time and worked against a glowering sky that threatened to rain us off yet again.

We had to go to the post office, as the road tax system has moved into the 21st century, which means we had to print off our own tax papers from the internet, then go to the post office to pay.  A good idea, and apparently saving the government 80m euros compared to the old system of individually printed tax stickers, but we should've gone earlier, as everyone had left it to the last minute.  I queued for 40 minutes, while Dave walked Sid along the beach, then we met in Elite for a coffee.
 

The view from Elite.  This was the point I gave Dave the van papers and said, 'phew, both vehicles done!' and he said, 'what do you mean, both?  What about the motorbike?'.  So we went back to base, printed out another set of papers and went to queue for another 40 minutes.  It was quite pleasant, everyone we knew was in there, so we saw lots of people we might not otherwise have done.

Back on site, we continued clearing the felled trees, stripping the cypress and hauling clear.  Meanwhile, Yiannis was taking down the scaffolding they'd had in the mezzanine for bolting in the rafters.  'Telos?' I asked (an approximation for 'finished?')  He affirmed.  Wow, we thought.  Done.  I asked whether we could take down the temporary batons bracing the structure, but he said, no, he still had more bracing to do.  So - not finished exactly, but the rafters on, before the end of the year.  A good result.

After they'd gone - the finished roof skeleton.  Very exciting.  This is where the money has run out, though.  But at least we got as far as we could've hoped with the funds available.  My Mum has offered to lend us the few thousand we need to get a waterproof covering over the wood, either tiles or at least a membrane, depending on cost estimates which Constantine has promised to get for us.

Rain stops play

Thursday 27 Dec 2012

Expecting the builders today, so we were up and about early, with the dog walked and cats and chickens fed.  What joy! the water was still warmish in the morning, after three days of full sun reaching the panels at last.  The lads got on with the rafters, and we set to work logging and oliving.

 But the good weather wasn't going to last, so today was a race against the rain

 Dave at work with the chainsaw, cutting logs

Our most radically pruned tree of all - no little branches on this one.  We are assured they will grow, though.

By 1230 the rain has arrived and is lashing down on everything.  The builders waited out the first deluge, but it didn't seem to be letting up, so they packed up damply and left with apologies.

My job: picking these lovely olives off the cut branches.

Rafters off the ground

Wednesday 26 December 2012

Imagine our surprise, 0830 Boxing Day, to hear the builders' car arrive and the clattering of work starting on site.  We crawled out of bed and stood, amazed, as work on the final stage of the structure kicked into action.  An hour later, the tree pruners returned to finish the last three trees.  Not a restful day.

The first rafters defining the eastern end of the structure, with a lot more view towards the sea now the olives have been cut back.

Astro wandering around on her lonesome, while Notso is convalescent in the chicken hut.

Dave, Sid, and when not taking photos, me, taking it easy while all this activity whirls around us. 

Christmas Day

Tuesday 25 December 2012

 We decided on small pressies for Christmas day:  a capo (guitar-y thing) for Dave, and a mortice gauge for me (ambitious woodworking here I come!)

We were going to Amanda (from Art Group)'s house for Christmas dinner.  She had her Mum to stay and had also invited Lesley, a mutual friend.  Amanda is vegetarian, but didn't mind us carnivores in the kitchen, so we said we'd bring a chicken to roast.  At the butchers on Christmas eve, we asked for a local chicken, around 2.25kg (4-5lbs) but he could only produce an athletic looking thing about half that.  So we agreed to take a turkey - equally athletic, but a bit larger.  We arrived at Amanda's almost on time, put the turkey in the oven with Amanda's Mum to mind it, while the other four of us took Sid and Amanda's dog Sol for a long walk.  Unfortunately, we came back via our land, to show Lesley where the build was up to, and forgot Sol wasn't trained like Sid.  He flushed the chickens out of the undergrowth and grabbed Notso.  Dave and Amanda had to prise his jaws open to release the bird, who was obviously shellshocked.  I put her away in the pen and we kept our fingers crossed that she wasn't too hurt.

We got back later than planned and had the usual Christmas dinner panic to get everything on the table on time.  I nipped back up the land just as it was getting dark to check the chickens and close the pen, Notso still traumatised, but eating, which seemed promising.  We had a lovely day apart from the chicken scare, finishing up with port and stilton and trivial pursuit by the fire in the evening.

Radical Pruning

Monday 24 December 2012

Spiros rang us on Sunday evening and said he had people to prune the olive trees in the morning.  So we were up early ready to meet the lads with a chainsaw.  Luckily Spiros came to show them where we were and to do the complicated translating.  They understood olive trees, but also offered to cut away all that underbrush cluttering the NE corner.  We love that thicket.  We dissuaded an attack on it about a month ago, when Kristoforos the sheep man was trying to do us a favour and cut it down.  Lots of small birds live there, and it gives us a lot of privacy from the building work going on in that direction.  Anyway, we said clearly - no ground clearing, just the overgrown trees.

This is the worst example of overgrown tree - the branches get hollowed out by ants and lack of water and you risk the whole tree coming down in a storm - either on the cars or the camper van.

After radical pruning, only the gnarled stump is left, with a few feathery branches.  These will grow strong and productive now the tree can concentrate on them.

We also asked for two of the taller 'small' cypress to be taken down.  They are forming such a barrier to our panels at this time of year.  These trees were barely there when we moved in, we haven't noticed how they've grown.

This was the tallest one.  We'd thought about trying to fell it ourselves, but if it fell in the wrong direction it could crush the panels on the zone, the awning, the chicken hut or the studio hut, so we left it to the experts.  One of them is just visible in this photo, climbing the tree with a rope.  When it came down it crushed a plant pot, which we didn't mind about at all.

And the one I was most concerned about, the lovely tree-house tree of Richie's.  Not that we've ever built the tree-house, and he's getting a bit old for one now, but this tree also is a storm risk, being so close to the house structure.  It will grow new branches lower to the ground, easier for crop harvesting.

After the men had gone, we had to clear the track, cutting up the logs and collecting the olives, and there is still loads to do, all round the site.  In all, an unusual Christmas eve. 

Waterproofing

Sunday 23 Dec

Dave has found out the hard (damp and cold) way that his waterproofs aren’t.  We’ve been waiting weeks for delivery of re-waterproofing solution, which finally arrived by the skin of its teeth on Friday.  Despite the wet weather, Dave wanted to get this done, so we washed them on Saturday, drip-dried overnight under the awning and sprayed on Sunday.  The weather is all set to clear up on Monday!

Then we finished the olive harvest.  Storms over the weekend had brought down this many olives into the nets we’d moved under the largest tree.  We had asked Spiros at Mamma Mia if he knew anyone who would prune our seriously overgrown olive trees and he’d said he’d get someone to come as soon as it was dry.  We would then be able to get the last olives off the fallen branches.  We didn’t want to wait too long as the olives in the sacks start to deteriorate and can go bitter if left too long.   

I am amazed by the colour in the olives – they are a rich maroon purple on light apple green – not black as expected.