Author: Claudia

On and on we go! Now is the time to finish the rough and tough job. Steel netting is lifted up to the roof. The netting is laid out on the roof of concrete beams and buns. Next they are tied to the steel for the beams that will be poured in concrete. Cutouts are…

An awful lot of material has been delivered at the building site: steel, beams, jack postst, wood. And within a few weeks all this material has been transformed. Steel bending, construction shuttering, beam laying, bar bending, and hammering all those pieces of wood together to the necessary molding for the concrete of the roof. Suddenly…

Ouch! Suddenly time passes by so fast. We had to deal with a nasty flu, welcomed our son and his girlfriend for a long awaited visit, worked many hours on the normal Dutch office job and had to beam ourselves to and from the Algarve to handle some other family matters. Meanwhile so much has…

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…

Over the last weeks we kept talking about grey concrete. Of course, grey concrete is beautiful as long as you know they are building your dreamhouse with it. But concrete is also dirty stuff, it smells bad, and it is poisonous for nature. This green nature, overwhelmingly present around us. So last night I decided…

This is a bizarre and complicated floorplan, I suggest this as a subject for a university graduation. But the gentlemen for construction, architecture and contractor breathe this kind of stuff, daily. How is this crawl space under your floor to be explained? Last week we were standing on a large surface of concrete. Now they…

So much happened this week! Still no connection to the electricity, but the steel fixers were there to commence their craft. Another round of phone calls was made. And so appears another solution. For there is always someone with a solid sturdy generator in the shed, of course. Who cares that the tires are flat,…

On a bright morning in spring Mr. Architect enters his building site to discuss the works for the coming week with the contractor. The contractor starts to laugh. The architect is wearing a building helmet. The helmet is red. Because red is the favorite color of his wife. So they purchased two nice red helmets.…

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…

Spring has arrived! There is a joyful sun in the sky and the pools of water are rapidly diminishing. Dark spots become lighter and lighter, and soon the clay ground bursts open. This means that the start of building is coming closer and closer! In the meantime we are treating ourselves with long walks in…