Building has started!!!
And then suddenly the day has arrived! On Monday the 15 of March 2021, exactly 2,5 years after the purchase of a piece of land, the official building announcement is being installed!
Luís got up very early and enjoys the first rays of sunshine. The weather forecast is superb. Soon a small lorry arrives. The builders are ready to go as well!
Digging
They start with more digging. More? The indicated spaces for the buildings have to be dug out even deeper, for the construction of the fundaments. Again an excavator starts to work, where do we leave all this earth? The swimming pool will also have to be excavated later on, another 120 cubic meters that has to go somewhere. We’ll have to decide that later on, once the house is finished and we can work on the gardens.
Poo box
They install a small trailer for machinery, and they excavate a deep hole for their poo box. No dixies here with chemical fluids, just a natural hole in the ground. Covered with some planks and a cabin with a door. I’d rather not think about it, I’ll plant a bush later on. That will grow lavishly, no doubt, naturally, erm….
Hurry up
During the day the two bosses (Fernando, our contractor and Luís, chef of Everything) yearn for a cup of coffee, so they head to Alice. The café is officially closed of course. And today also the water supply has been switched of for maintenance. But for special guests Alice always has some water left in the coffee machine. Fernando would like a second coffee and walks to the open door to call for Alice. She arrives, but she provides him no coffee. She gives him a firm speech! Hurry up she says, you go back to work now, this house needs to be built immediately! These people belong here, in this village, they urgently need to move back here! This is so sweet… I think our efforts to integrate in this community start to have an affirmative effect…
Feet
At the end of the week the floorplan of our building consists of square holes in the ground. In these holes steel pins are sticking out. It looks weird, like an archeological finding place. In the holes they will install steel reinforcements and pour concrete. In the end there will be 24 feet for 24 columns that will hold the weight and structure of the house, and support the roof. There will be a space under and around the construction to discharge excessive water and moist. So we will also keep dry feet inside the building.
Steel nerves
They bring in steel, big netting en a lot of poles. There is wood for the molding. Suddenly the large terrain is full of things. They establish a space where they can work with the steel and transform it into requested sizes. Therefore they need a machine on electricity. Therefore they need a building connection to the electricity network. Which already has been installed, with a special fuse box. We have arranged all the necessary paperwork for the installation. Now we need one official person to press an apparently very official button, so that the electricity starts to work. Therefore we need the national electricity company, the EDP. A company that has outsourced this work to a subcontractor. A subcontractor that is unreachable, as they are very very busy. Therefore you need to build up pressure. By continuously trying to call them. By everyone in this project. OK, Rome also wasn’t built in one day. We keep our steel nerves. It’s started, and that is that!
