Beams and buns
Sometimes things do not unfold very smoothly in this building process. Last Sunday we were scooping water out of the ‘chambers’ to dry the floor of the crawling space. The weather was extremely perfect this week. Excellent building conditions to cover the crawling space with the floor. But there was no builder in sight, for three beautiful days it was all birdsong but no working noises. They started laying beams only from Thursday. On Friday afternoon they promised to continue working until sunset. But despite their efforts, on Saturday we saw the work was not finished. And knew rain would return on Sunday. So all our scooping water was useless. And now we can not reach the surface anymore. That feeling.
Heavy
Last week our builders were finishing the small rooms of the crawling space. The constructor ordered to brick extra walls for an extra sound construction. By the end of April another heavy load of building material was delivered: concrete beams and buns. This will be a heavy house, with extra strength to endure an earthquake or two.
Scoop
We also saw a layer of water on the floor of the chambers, rain that had not yet evaporated. If you cover that up now, it will never get another opportunity to dry. So we decided to spend our Sunday on scooping up all that water, an estimated 500 liters, with buckets and a dustpan and sponges. My back was not too happy with this effort, but it was a great calorie burner. And you feel so proud and satisfied afterwards!
The workmen did not return until Thursday. No idea what they were doing meanwhile, probably some project elsewhere. So sometimes we are first in line, and sometimes we’ll just have to wait and see if someone shows up. But such a waste of three beautiful days where our project was screaming for workers under a blue sky.
Filling her up with buns
Thursday a machine arrived to carry the concrete beams to the workmen. All beams spread out evenly over the little chambers. Next the precision work of filling the space between the beams with the concrete buns. It’s not like playing with Lego. It is a rather tough manual job with a lot of levering with heavy tooling to get each bun in place.
Our workmen continue to work hour after hour and remain very friendly. But this is absolutely too much work for them to finalize in two days. Even when they promise to continue till sunset. On Saturday we find the project unfinished. And we know heavy rain is expected the coming night.
