Bathroom plastering

26 -29 October 2018

Back from Athens on Thursday (in time for choir practice in the evening), and straight into prepping the bathroom for plaster on Friday.

 Taping the bath and the woodwork

 and around the windows.

 Then everything is swathed in sheets (with old towels underneath to protect the bath and loo

 Windows covered up to protect from flying plaster and limewash (I get a bit slapdash at times!)  First panels completed.

 Monday evening, all plaster panels done except two behind the door.  The newer plaster is grey, the older stuff is pale pink.  We have very nearly run out of sharp sand, so we decided to try using half fine grey sand and half sharp pink.  It makes a much nicer plaster to work with, very fine, and hopefully just as sticky.  One slight drawback is that we hadn't realised that the cats have found the fine sand to be an excellent litter tray, easy to work even in drought, and so Dave is having to filter out the poo as best he can before making the mix.

A strange thing has happened.  We have been worrying about how to get another delivery of sand and gravel and lime.  Last time the truck came he said the track was very difficult to get down, and that was nearly a year ago, so it could be much worse now.  But when we went to look, it seems someone has bulldozed it flat in the last few days.  Useful, but disturbing - who else would want that?

On the trail of the electric car

Tues - Thurs 23 - 25 October 2018

We have been summoned!  The nice people at Nissan, to whom we have paid a deposit for an all-electric Leaf, want us to go to Athens for a discussion and a test drive.  We had been thinking for some time that we'd like to see the new Acropolis museum and visit the Parthenon, so we booked an apartment and the bus and took off on our holidays.

 The bus stopped at the Olympia Plaza just past Patras, where we spotted this beauty - the first fast charger we've seen in Greece.  We knew there was one somewhere around here, but very excited to actually find it!

 At the Nissan showroom, examining the merchandise.  Soon after this, Dave was brave enough to take to the downtown Athens streets for a test drive.  I was not brave enough.  Dave loved it.  Our car is in Greece, waiting for us to find the rest of the dosh to liberate it.  Soon, hopefully.

 Next day, on the tourist trail, taking selfies at the Acropolis ...

 and at the ancient Agora

 Top of the world at the Parthenon

 and after lunch, in the museum.  

I rather liked this, I'm sure we can find a spot for something similar around the house.

What we did bring home was a little startled owl, a replica of a symbol on a coin from 400 BC.  I like it in the arched window.

Chimney sweeping

20 October 2018

It's getting on for that time of year again, when we have to shift our focus towards preparing for winter.  First to do - sweep the stove chimney.  When we had the stove installed we took the option of having a telescopic bottom section of the chimney that, in theory, should just slide up so we can insert a chimney brush.  As the stove has an oven in the top, you can't just poke a brush up through the stove as there is no opening.

I had envisaged an inner tube with an aperture, but in fact there was no support when the lower part was telescoped upward.  This created a stressful situation ...

 Ready to go: special cloth swathing the stove, brushes inserted and poles fitted.  What this doesn't show is the 30 minutes of battling with the stove pipe just previously.

This gives a better idea.  We found that it was very difficult to persuade the pipe to slide up itself to insert the brushes, so Dave levered it inch by inch with a long piece of wood, while I stuck in batons to hold it up until we had enough space for the brush.  Then we swept it out, removed the cloth and hoovered up.  All good.  But then we tried to drop the telescoping section back down.

Initially, Dave was up the ladder, holding the upper section of pipe, while I tried to work the pipe downwards.  This resulted in me holding a heavy double section of pipe that had come loose in my hands, while Dave was straining to hold the rest of the chimney up.  The only solution was to return my bit and put the supports back in.  The problem was that the bracket holding the chimney was slumping, so we built this leaning tower 'of pizza' (as Dave called it) to support the bracket, so that we could take out the lowest section again, and beat it apart.  Then we struggled it back into place and tightened the collar.  Not my happiest hour and a half.  We were battered by the time it was done.

Bedroom complete

Friday 19 October 2018

All the furniture is now back in the bedroom, all washed down and spruced up.  No new stuff yet.  No time (or indeed, money) to spare for furnishings until all the building work is complete.  I am hoping to build in a wardrobe and dressing table, and Rowan has shown us the drawers he's made for his workbench, so I'm fancying some handmade furniture from him, too.  All in the rich fullness of time.

 Most of the clutter returned, nice to have our things around us, though

 Inside the cupboard, to the left ...

and to the right.  All glaringly white and light.

Yesterday, after our volunteering at Lefkogaia recycling, we took the dog for a bounce in the waves (she's never seen waves before) on the north beach at Lefkas.

All things windows

17-19 October 2018

While we were working on the bedroom, and Jade continued prepping the Solar, Rowan finally got round to fixing in the last of our windows.  We'd had the glassed and painted frames sitting in a pile in various places for months, moving them around to protect them whenever the work swung round to their latest location.  So it was a joy to find they were, all of a sudden, installed!

 The little masked window on the right, newly installed - picture shows the stuff moved out of the bedroom and not yet replaced, cluttering up the studio.

 The other studio window - which has been a polythene sheet for a very long time

 Then over the next two days, Rowan cut and fitted arched trims in the 'Cathedral' window, to match the window shapes.  The one on the left is done, the middle and right hand ones show the insulation crammed into the corners.

 Rowan at work, with monster nail gun, managing to avoid our wildly enthusiastic spider plant

 A lovely job done on the 'Georgian' window, trimmed all round.

And the little arched window, also finished off and ready to paint.

Wood and paint

16 and 17 October 2018

While waiting for us in the bedroom to clear the floor coverings and give him measurements for skirting, Dave moved onto the window trims in the bathroom.  Meanwhile, Paris and I are storming through all the filling, sanding and painting of the woodwork in the bedroom, and getting the last pieces from Dave as soon as the areas become accessible.  We're working fast to try to get done by Weds, as Paris doesn't have any more spare time for a while, and I just want to get Dave and I back into our comfy bed and off the z-beds.

 Bathroom window trims done

 In the bedroom, feature blue paint goes on the outside of the door and the inner panels of the cupboard doors - which still look a little bare ... they need something more?

 Blue panels on the north wall, and new skirting fitted below.  Now to mask the floor and shuffle round with the paint brush - twice!

 The workforce (inside and out): Dave, Jade, Paris, Rowan, Dmitri, Panos (and me, behind the camera).  Lots of mouths to feed - Dave rustled up a fabulous lunch for everyone.

 Wednesday evening - all done, even the two missing ceiling boards and insulation inside the cupboard (remembered, with a sinking feeling, at the last minute!)

 Early Wednesday morning, after doing a little research the evening before, I was very brave and freehand-painted these two little lotus flowers on the cupboard doors.  Gives them a focal point.  They're a bit scruffy, but I like them.

And the bed reinstated and made up ready for sleep.  Hurrah!

Creature feature

14 October 2018

Having a Sunday afternoon off, I decided it was cool enough now for the chickens to get out of their enclosure for some time in the grass, so I cut the 50m netting into two, and made two smallish netted areas in the garden for chicken scrabbling.

 This is the new one, under one of the olive trees where I've had sheets down to suppress weeds, and collected a lot of leaf mould.  Lots of bugs to unearth!

This fabulous creature turned up on the newly limewashed walls - my grubby finger is there to give scale.  And the one below appeared on the outside of the kitchen window, giving an excellent opportunity to get a gecko silhouette.

Busy as bees

12 - 13 October 2018

Work continues in all areas.  Panos has come to help, firstly digging out the earth round the Solar to keep the wood from rotting, and then he and Dmitri will give the exterior its annual whitewash.  Rowan and Jade are working on the woodwork in the Solar, and Paris has joined us to help paint woodwork in the bedroom.

 I bought a tin of nice paint for some of the detail in the bedroom and elsewhere around the house.  It's a pale blue-green.  Here it is on the plywood panels at the top of the wall over where the bedhead will be.

 Panos digging a trench clear of the Solar foundation

 Paintwork in the bedroom - the little triangle of glass over the door - surrounded by lots of fiddly wood bits botched up with filler and paint.

 Jade and Rowan working on the Solar frame

 Paris second-coating the cupboard.  Just over her head is the forgotten ceiling panel, that one, and one on the other side.  We put in the central one because of the light fitting, and then just forgot there were two others yet to do.  Add it to the snag list!

 Whitewashing mostly finished, and the tape starts to come off - always a good moment!

Rowan fixes a soffit board under the glass lip - for support and to hold the guttering.

Fancy new door

10 October 2018

Again Rowan surprised us with a new door.  This is the one to go in the centre of the south wall, opening into the 'Solar'.  It is very beautiful, made to match the front door, but centre opening, as each leaf is as wide as the wall is deep, so it won't protrude into the limited space in the Solar.

 The door arrives

 Our snazzy new one-way cat flap.  The cats quickly learned how to open the old flap from the outside (it keeps marauding strays out) but will need to adjust to this new one.

Here it is, installed.  With temporary plywood panels for security while Rowan gets the glass inserts cut.

Living in glass houses

Monday 8 October 2018

Rowan and Jade came over after work, around quarter to five, and set to installing a second glass panel on the roof of the glasshouse. 

I have been thinking about a name for the 'glassed-in passive solar heating area' at the front of the house.  Officially, if it was built of cob, it would be a 'trombe wall' - named for the originator (I think), and referring to the thermal mass of the cob.  As we lost patience with not having walls, and completed this section in strawbale (we had just enough remaining bales to finish), there is no thermal mass at present, merely insulation, so the 'trombe' name is inappropriate.  The naming options include greenhouse/conservatory/glasshouse/outhouse/hot house, but none are entirely appropriate.  Then I recalled that the residents of chilly medieval manors would call their sunniest room the 'Solar', which I rather like.  We'll see if it sticks.

 Dave and I just stood back and watched in awe as the work progressed.  (I did, anyway - Dave usefully held the ladder)

 Rowan and Jade looked like mime artists, handling large glass panels barely visible against the sky

 They just kept going back for yet another one

 and eventually completed the fitting at quarter past six - much to Jade's horror, as she'd wanted to knock off after the second one went up!