On holiday

30 May 2019

Now that Mum has arrived, and Jonathan for the weekend, we are on holiday, so all the stress and long hours of getting ready can be put aside, and we can chill out with our guests.  The house is finished.  Hurrah!

Finishing the tiles

25 - 28 May 2019

Again, it was well before I thought possible that the grouting started on the kitchen tiles.  Using a complex arrangement of planks to span between the solid points of wood floor, older kitchen tiles and firebrick plinth under the stove, Zed was able to reach every corner and lash in the lime-grout. 

 Watching the grouting.

 Whenever Rowan comes to the house he says, 'where's my broom?' and starts sweeping up.  He is rightly very proud of our floor.

 Three days later, we risk walking on the tiles to start the scrubbing clean.  Mum arrives tomorrow.  

A visitor inspects the works

 I had assumed we would be totally finished with the show-home arranging by the end of Tuesday, so I asked Rowan and Paris to come for a 'casual supper' (meaning no time had been expended on planning or making fancy food!).  With the way things worked out - and how long it took to scrub the tiles clean - Dave was painting the first coat of preservative on the tiles as I was lighting the candles for supper.

The next morning we painted the second coat, in between hanging curtains and moving furniture into place, before leaving for the airport.  Phew, just in time!

Furniture!!

22 - 25 May 2019

While the kitchen tiles are drying, it has been time to start construction of our new Ikea furniture, and finally turn our workshop/barn into a show home (for a limited time only!)

 First we made the dining table, then we could use it as a work bench

 Ahhh!  A homely corner

 Pulling back the focus, still an encampment of tools and other clutter in the living room.

With lots of the furniture built, we can finally get to the floor outside the bathroom, and give it two coats of 'Surfapore R' a breathing but stain resistant finish.

Starting the tiles

18 May 2019

I had assumed that the limecrete slab would need weeks to dry, but Dave and Rowan agreed that it seemed firm enough to start laying tiles.  This is incredible!  It means there is a chance the floor could be entirely finished before my Mum and brother come to visit at the end of May.

 Rowan cuts the little curve into the line between the wood and area to be tiled

 The slab, cleaned up and ready for tiles

 Tiling commences

 Meanwhile, Dave fills in behind the skirting board, where there are gaps. There are a lot of gaps, created by the plaster panels being recessed from the wooden uprights.  Unavoidable in this type of construction.  So Dave has a bucket of lime plaster, and is poking it down behind the skirting.  I was going to do this job, as it is tough on the knees, but it was frustratingly slow, and I still had so much sorting out to do upstairs.  Very grateful when Dave volunteered to take over.

 The tiles were so nearly complete, and then our tiler was called away and had a week's work elsewhere before he could return, so all hope of early completion seemed lost.

Rowan, once again, came to our rescue, and finished the last few tiles, so they could be setting ready for grouting.  We suggested doing them ourselves, but Rowan is very possessive of the floor, and couldn't face the possibility we would mess it all up at this stage!

Terrace post bases

17 May 2019

While the limecrete slab in front of the stove is given drying time, work started on the footing for the terrace outside the kitchen door.  Pits and wooden frames were made for four small concrete bases.

Induction cooking

16 May 2019

On the way back from the mountains we called into Ikea for more bits and pieces (we are outfitting a home from scratch, in many ways) and included in our latest haul was a portable induction hob.  As we are off-grid, with more power than we can use on most days of the year, it makes sense to have an electric hob, and induction is the most efficient.  On sequentially overcast days in winter we have to use the gas hob, but when we can use electric, we will. 

We flee to the mountains!

12 May 2019

When we cleared the living room, taking out tools and our huge and unwieldy collection of wood offcuts, to make room I brought into the house all the books, dvds, fabrics and other miscellany that had been boxed up eight years ago.

So while the floor was being sanded, there was an opportunity to start organising and disposing of things, and once the sanding finished, to wipe down every item and find a place for each one.  A major undertaking, but satisfying in its way, especially as old treasures were unearthed, or unnecessary stuff sorted for recycling.

 The 'Linen Cupboard' - everything behind the ironing board needs clearing and re-housing so I can install my sewing table.

 The 'Library' - looking neat, but a lot of papers to be filed and other miscellany are cluttering the studio just behind, all of which need to be found a home out here.

 The freshly sanded and hoovered living room, is off limits except in socks or leaping from rug to rug.  The heavy-duty varnish needed for a floor covering is pretty unpleasant, so we decided to run away to the mountains for three days.

 On Rowan's advice we booked in at this world class eco-hotel near the Vikos Gorge in the Pindos Mountains of Northern Greece, and it was fabulous.  The rainy weather for the first two days just helped us relax.

 On day three the weather cleared and we had a wonderful walk along this relatively benign stretch of the lower gorge.

 And what a joy to come back to!  The living room all ready for us to inhabit it. 

Measuring the land, unwelcome visitors and a concert

10 & 11 May 2019

Greece has decided it needs a proper Land Registry, because people (including us) are being sold land that is falsely recorded and looks bigger than it is.  As part of this process we all have to get our 'topographs' recorded by GPS positioning and submitted to the relevant department. 

Spiros arrived with his GPS machine and took various measurements of the position of the house on the land, to add to the existing boundary measurements he had, so that the papers can be filed.

Spiros at work

 Dave tackling the overwhelming undergrowth everywhere on the land.  Unfortunately, after a few hours something in the motor burned out and the strimmer packed in - frustrating!

The unwelcome visitor was a rat and several mice.  Things were chewed, one morning, so we made a concerted effort to block up all access points, but that drove the vermin into the walls behind the plasterboard.  So we put down poison and blocked every new hole with metal mesh.  But then the rat died, and stayed behing the wall.  After a day of realising this, as the smell grew stronger, we pulled out the dishwasher and deconstructed the wall behind it.  The vermin were living in the gap between lime plaster and plasterboard - a short-cut, hybrid solution we had used below the kitchen cupboards to save time on lathing.  Not a good idea, as it turned out.  Dead rat and live mice were evicted, and Dave made a mix of plaster, so I could slap a good thick coat on.  We didn't replace the plasterboard.

One advantage was that I gave the kitchen several very thorough bleach-cleanings until it sparkled!

On 11 May, the Lefkas Singers (including Naomi and I, above) joined a choir festival celebrating the Seven Islands unification with Greece.  We were the only ex-pat choir, the only all female voices and the only ones to perform without music and with expression!  It went down very well, and Rosa was pleased with us (phew!)

Thinking out the terrace

7 May 2019

While the sanding was going on inside, Dave and I started considering the terraced area we want outside the kitchen door.  The door is about 70cm above ground level, because our ancient digger driver, when levelling the ground, said we didn't want to live in a hole and wouldn't dig down far enough at the top end.  Then the ring-beam pourers built a footing for a little outhouse that had been removed from the plans, so we have a small concrete square immediately outside the door, with temporary boarding over it.  Now we would like to get proper decking, and a place to sit in the morning.  Also, we want to put rainwater capture tanks under the deck, so it all needs planning out.

 Our current scruffy kitchen door entry, and the three largest tanks we can get away with under the terrace - 3 x 500 litres, to collect rainwater from the south side of the roof.

 The terrace plan drawn out on the ground in planks for fine-tuning, from the north;

and from the south

Sanding horror

7 - 9 May 2019

The house is so open-plan, that the thought of sanding the floor in all that open space filled us with horror.  After several ideas were mooted, the only option was agreed to be a polythene tent enclosing the area to be sanded.  This involved a lot of string and staples, but was preferable to an inch of dust on virtually every item in the house.

 Getting started

The kitchen was blocked from the rest of the house, so we would have to carry food via the outside to the music room.

 From the mezzanine, the top of the tent.

 

 Inside, as work progressed

By day three - the tools left inadvertently inside the tent were covered in a thick layer of very fine dust.

Floor boards

1 - 4 May 2019

With the centre beam supported in place, work started on the joists.  I set up the camera for stop-motion and took random shots of the work in progress.  Here are a few.

 Most of the joists in place

 Dave and I were roped in to mix and pour cement filler behind a small retaining wall for the limecrete-and-gravel section, which would support the join between wood and tile.  Dave made mixes, I filled and levelled.

 The first board has to be cut around the shaped wood threshold at the foot of the stairs, an intricate bit of work

 This is the brick and cement retaining wall, to hold the gravel under the limecrete in place, and allow us to put a fancy curve where the two floor surfaces join.

 End of the first day of boarding, we have enough width to walk from the stairs to the kitchen - all on the same level!!!

 The second day

 The final sections, showing how very un-square our house is, lots of little slivers to cut.

Ta daaa-ah!