The living room floor

29 April 2019

It may be Easter Monday here, but we're all unOrthodox, so work started on the living room.  Luckily the limecrete slab has gone off enough to be covered in plywood and walked on.

First we needed all the levels checked and marked, and then a trough chiselled out up the middle of the room for the central joist bearer.  Nasty hot dusty work.

Furniture!

24 -27 April 2019

For eight years I've managed without proper furniture.  We've had building-site furniture, scavenged from closed-down pubs or friends' clear-outs.  Now I have nearly all my floors, I want some comfort (sofas and chairs), elegance (dining table), storage (sideboard and shelves), and I want it now!  The only answer is Ikea - at least they have a reasonable environmental policy, and a good website for checking the materials used in each item.  So I ordered a few rooms' worth of pieces.  With a delivery schedule of 7 working days, and with Greek Easter in the middle of that, I reckoned we had a couple of weeks to wait.

Next day, they rang.  Suddenly we had to find places to put lots of large cardboard boxes that still left the living room clear to work in, and the music room clear to live in.  Luckily the weather is good, and non-precious items can go outside.

 Space cleared and mats down to protect our sparkly new floor

Same in the hall, room to put things alongside the stairs, as long as we can squeeze past to bathroom.

 Some time later.  Boxes in the hall, some chairs in the entry, garden furniture left outside, sofa-bed ready to construct in the music room

 A little later again, sofa-bed constructed.  Dave tests it out.  (We haven't had a sofa you could stretch out full-length on since 2011!)

Meanwhile, the wood for the living room floor also arrives, and can only go outside.  So we covered it with the (now obsolete) boat bunk underlays, to protect it from warping in the heat.

Dust cloud

23 April 2019

The sky turned orange today.  There had been weather warnings, and it is quite usual at this time of year, but I've never seen the sky so full of dust.  When the rain came, everything was coated in a thick layer of orange - sand from the sahara. 

 Watching the skies

 Next sunny day, Dave and the hose and the kitchen broom set to work to clean our solar panels.

 Meanwhile, with the music room floor completed, we've got a week to clear out everything in the living room.  This involved a major clear out of the hut, including live rat eviction, so that our enormous collection of random wood offcuts could be relocated.  (Eventually to be useful for lighting the fire, if nothing else).

 So I'm constantly in and out of the front door, organising tools and wood and furniture, while Dave is on the roof, spraying water all over me.  We could probably have organised this better?

But in the end (and it took most of the week) the living room is mostly empty and ready to go.

Sparkly new floor

11 - 20 April 2019

Work proceeds rapidly in the music room, every day is a new excitement.  It is so wonderful to be walking around at the right height for the room, rather than in a hole 30cm down.  The proportions of the room have adjusted wonderfully, the windows are no longer too high.  We are very pleased with developments.

 Joists and nubbins (yes, really!)

 And the floorboards, at last, hurrah!

 Not easy to see here, but after a full day of sanding, the room is coated in dust, and the (previously invisible) spiderwebs are very evident.

 I do my bit base-coating the skirting boards.

 Rowan comes to fit the skirting boards, and because he's protecting the floor by working in his socks, I lay down some rugs (due for the wash, anyway) between the workbench and the door.

Taa-rah!

It's beautiful.

A little gardening

13 April 2019

After a morning of lugging buckets around for the kitchen floor slab, we've been spending a little time in the garden in the afternoons - aching backs permitting!  Just touching up here and there, doing a bit of strimming the paths (until the strimmer broke) and weeding the beds.

 Our little patch of lavender has gone crazy.  The bees love it.

 I weeded and tidied up the hugel beds.  The rotten wood cores have now mostly collapsed (releasing nutrients into the soil, and they look very healthy.  One of the self-seeded trees has produced blossom, so we are hoping for fruit to identify what they are.

 Some left-over wood made into the basis of a raised bed.  All the wood cluttering the living room will have to be cleared out in the next week or so, ready for the floor in there, so this did two jobs in one go.  I need more time to gather up compost for it tho'.

 Hedge trimming the path down the side of the washing line.

 The comfrey - which I was afraid we'd lost over the winter - back with a flourish!

The origano crop.  Left to dry in the solarium

Also in the solarium, a few seeds started.

Finishing the kitchen floor slab

9 - 19 April 2109

As Rowan and Zed make the floor in the music room happen, Dave and I get on with the limecrete slab by the stove.  This was the work we intended to do on the Friday that the boat sank, which changed our plans dramatically.

 Nine days later, we finally get to finish this section

 And can start to prepare the remainder.

 We divided the area into four sections to make it easier to fill in stages, and to level as we go along.  It's hard work, Dave lifting endless buckets of sand and gravel into the mixer, while I carry bucketloads in and then work them level.  

 One down, three to go

 Gravel in the base, leaving 12cm for the limecrete slab.  As we want this to go off a little quicker than pure limecrete, Dave is adding two cupfuls of cement to each mix (3 buckets sand, 3 buckets gravel and 1 bag of lime).  It won't make a huge difference, but may speed the drying up by a week or so.

 Two done

 Dave scraping up the last of the heap of gravel that was taken out of the music room to lower the ground level for the joists.

 Final sections gravelled.  Doing two sections together because we were feeling strong.

 The temporary floor built and tested, so we can get from the kitchen to the rest of the house once the limecrete is in.

That's it.  All done, with the temp floor reinstalled.  Just got to try to stay out of it now, until it goes off.

Happy days! 

 That's the last major building project in the house structure.  Plenty of decorating and furnishing yet to do, and all the garden and access, but even so, it is still a major milestone.

Joists in the music room

5 -11 April 2019

The wood arrived for the music room floor - an exciting moment!  Rowan is supervising the project, and Zed is doing most of the work.  We are generally faffing about and trying to get the slab round the stove laid, in between requests for tools or decisions, which distract us.

 A trench is dug along the sides of the room for the joist bearers.  

 The cats have discovered the Solarium, and decided they quite like it.

 The living room has become an obstacle course again, full of floorboards

 Joists go in - exciting times!

Dave doing his bit with the nasty spray that dissuades the European Wood-boring beetle from eating our floor.

Farewell to the Boat

1 April 2019

Not an April Fool;  Tropi-boat was towed to the yard, and inspected by the surveyor, who said she was a 'total loss'.  So the insurers will pay us off, we sell the boat to someone who wants a project (not us, we have a few in hand already), and we bid farewell to a friend of 13 years.

 The hole in the stern (stuffed with a cushion by the divers while raising her)

 The tow.  Tropi looks fine from the outside, at a distance.

 The mess - not so good close up, mud everywhere, interior destroyed, electrics spoiled ...

 Quite a job to put her right, but we are hoping she'll get another lease of life.