|
Post by sophie on Nov 15, 2015 2:09:05 GMT 2
If you keep posting such good pictures, I will have to come and see it all in person...all the work you have done sure looks good.
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Nov 15, 2015 9:47:41 GMT 2
And you'd be welcome.
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Nov 16, 2015 21:32:22 GMT 2
The workers came this morning at 8am to start work and shortly after the digger turned up. He made quick work of digging out for the bottom of the wall. The problem, as always, is there isn’t enough earth to dig down any distance and the bucket kept scraping along the large rocks just under the surface. However, we needed the machine for one more thing. Look at this picture. Something wrong, huh? Yep, a bloody large crack. I’ve been watching it over the summer. It’s on the arches close to the house that are around the pool. The foundations on that area are subsiding. I thought initially it was because of water coming off the hill and undermining it. But I found something different. A secret room. As the house became bigger many years ago additional storage rooms were built, and in no particular order. Over the intervening period parts of walls have collapsed and roofs fallen in and then covered up any access. What none of us knew was there was a small room right on the top edge of the building where there was also a small store shed. The shed was turned into my battery/electrical room. At the side of it, and not noticed as it was well and truly blocked up and covered, was another area. The arches were built on the edge of it and they were falling in to it. Truly, it wasn’t noticed by any of us and I’m sure I would have spotted it as I was there when the arches were done. I was told it was found and nipped out to look. It was about three by two metres and completely empty. I went and got my camera just as the digger man started filling it in. You can see how big the rock is – And that is it in the hole/room – It was decided to fill the rest up with stone and concrete. Just at the side of the house, from an angle I don’t think you’ve seen before, is a gully. Water drains down it all the time as there is a spring I think I’ve mentioned sometime before feeding in to it. Many moons ago I posted about the cave and tunnel nearby which would be to the left of the photo. Here are numerous large boulders we’ve dropped there from all the other works. The digger grabbed quite a few – The hole was mostly filled in and the long process of dropping concrete in began to tie it all together – This will be finished off tomorrow. It didn’t leave them with a lot of time to do much with the wall. This only needs a couple more rows tomorrow though – The blocks, I know them as breeze blocks, will be left bare for now. We could paint them but then you can’t do anything else with them like cementing on facing stones. We will fill the back up with soil and plant plants that will grow over and down the front of the wall anyway. That leads me to something about money and the cost of things. I’m sure you’d be interested. In the last photo I posted yesterday you can see the wall of the back patio. This was made out of concrete and faced with stones. We initially thought of carrying that stone on with the new wall. However, we must have forgotten how much it cost. To build using the breeze blocks costs us 22 euro a square metre, plus tax. The new wall will cost us 264 euro. The rent of the machine plus driver for one hour and the cost of his time to get the machine to us and back is 70 euro. Labour for everything and cost of cement for the wall is another 100 euro. As the arches wall has been paid for a long time ago and as now it is subsiding, we are not paying anything for that work. It is down to the builder, as he knows and is quite happy about as the quotes he gives us are a fixed price. If anything goes wrong or he hits problems, it comes out of his profit and pocket with anything he does for us. The point of this is that to cover the wall with the same facing stones would cost us 900 euro. Yeah right, I’m really going to do that aren’t I? No, I’m not. A few dozen plants for a couple of euros each and a bit of growing time and you won’t see the bloody thing anyway. May take a couple of years but I’m not complaining. Tomorrow the workers say they are having a late start, 10am. Why I don’t know but it still leaves plenty of time to finish off. Also though, and at last, apparently the solar electricians have promised to turn up at 8m to finally do the job I wanted them to do. I want them to connect up the pool solar panels to the house batteries, with a switch in it, so that over the winter those panels can also charge up the house rather than the pool pump batteries which I don’t really need for now anyway. Originally I specified a separate system but I’ve realised I was wrong and when the pool is winterised I have some panels doing nothing.
|
|
|
Post by Baz Faz on Nov 17, 2015 0:13:00 GMT 2
Ah the discoveries you have with old buildings. The first house I owned in France had been a 2 room cottage. We added on a kitchen and put in stairs to the attic where we put two bedrooms and two bathrooms. There was what looked like a cellar (though we were later told the sheep spent the night there) which was turned into my large study and a wine store. Then came the first winter rains and my study was ankle deep in water. It turned out that a seasonal stream ran through it. All we could do was put a grille the length of one wall and drain the stream out through a pipe under the floor. I suppose it was a feature.
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Nov 17, 2015 17:43:16 GMT 2
Not an indoor swimming pool then? The wall has been 'finished'. That means it's been built but something needs doing to it over time to soften the just built look. The mains water pipe I've re-routed to behind the wall and it'll be covered in soil in due time and lots and lots of plants haphazardly placed to obstruct the view of the blocks - The hole has been filled in and eventually we'll do some planting on this area as well - Lastly, we have had a new arrival. A mate for Lancelot. He is the cock that guards our front wall. He has been a bit off colour and lonely lately and we thought he needed someone to cheer him up. So Esmeralda has turned up - I hope to get some wood this week and start on making the breakfast bar. We'll see. The solar electrician turned up this morning. He said he'd be here at 8am and so it was 10.30 when he arrived. He hung around for five minutes, looked at the job and said he'd be back later today or tomorrow with the parts and stuff to do it. I told him we'd been waiting 2 months as it is and his office is waiting for us to pay a previous bill, which we won't do until this job is completed. I'll let you know how we get on.
|
|
|
Post by happytraveller on Nov 20, 2015 9:28:26 GMT 2
Wow... looking awesome ! And you are very skilled Mark !
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Nov 20, 2015 14:30:07 GMT 2
I'm impressed.
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Nov 20, 2015 15:02:58 GMT 2
Thanks.
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Jan 18, 2016 16:12:49 GMT 2
Work has obviously quietened down a lot at Casa Mark, especially as we've been away quite a lot. But I haven't forgotten my tools completely and I've been pottering with a couple of things. Firstly I made a breakfast bar out of an old kitchen worktop, some floor boarding and railway sleepers. The mosaic tiles on the front are left over from the swimming pool. The chairs I could say I made but actually bought from IKEA...... We needed something to go round the top of the outside steps to stop you falling off into the olive trees in the dark. That was easy enough to do.... Eventually I managed to get round to filling in the niche in our bedroom with a wardrobe for Mrs M. Bless 'er, she's only been waiting for three or four years. She's currently packing to nip to Colombia for three weeks with a friend and to meet up with some old friends there....... The next thing I'm going to start whilst she's away is a desk and bookcases in one of the bedrooms we use as a study. I'll be buying the wood for that this week and I'll set upon it with gusto.
|
|
|
Post by Voy on Jan 19, 2016 0:51:32 GMT 2
yayyyyy -more OM project pics!! and lovely they are, too. I esp. like the false front doors to the wardrobe.
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Jan 19, 2016 11:13:05 GMT 2
I had a conversation with Mrs M. I said to her that I need to keep doing things. She asked why. I said because Voy said so.
|
|
|
Post by Voy on Jan 19, 2016 16:52:26 GMT 2
|
|
|
Post by happytraveller on Jan 29, 2016 11:08:55 GMT 2
What a nice place this is turning into!
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Jan 29, 2016 14:49:23 GMT 2
Thanks Happy. I'm trying to post a photo of some work I've done but Photobucket is down for now. Maybe later.
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Jan 29, 2016 17:38:35 GMT 2
One of about the last larger things to do was to sort out the study with a desk and bookcases. It was just a blank space an needed something doing with it. The centre larger section on the wall will be filled in with pictures/photos rather than books and stuff. So I did - edited to add the same photo but a different hosting site so Voy can maybe see it. Whichever she sees I will delete the other one
|
|
|
Post by Voy on Jan 30, 2016 3:34:02 GMT 2
oh dear. I just have a black box with an x in it....
|
|
|
Post by Scrubb on Jan 30, 2016 7:25:10 GMT 2
I love the wood of the desk!
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Jan 30, 2016 10:07:18 GMT 2
Scrubb, virtually all the wood is new floor boarding from the DIY shop that I alter to fit. It is good value for the amount you get in a pack, far better value than other stuff. Then I stain/varnish it. Half of the work comes from adapting the wood rather than having pre cut peices I just assemble.
|
|
|
Post by happytraveller on Jan 30, 2016 11:09:04 GMT 2
Just in case you get bored mark... There would be loads to do to our house in anzonico.
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Jan 30, 2016 16:34:54 GMT 2
I'll be there in half an hour or so. In fact I could probably drive from here in a couple of days.
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Jan 30, 2016 18:48:14 GMT 2
Except it may be under snow at this time, Dr Only!
This study is 'king gorgeous. The day I win the lottery, I'll arrange for you to sort a practice space for me.
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Jan 30, 2016 19:46:27 GMT 2
Practicing for what? ............ ah..... now I know............ do you want something like the old style Apothecaries had? With all the little draws and stuff? Plenty off bookshelves and a ladder on rollers to reach the top?
|
|
|
Post by kuskiwi on Jan 30, 2016 20:54:23 GMT 2
Wow. Looks fantastic.
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Jan 31, 2016 0:32:15 GMT 2
yeah, the lot. apothecary in one room. bookshelves and desk in another. maybe even the waiting room next door. you know how to make very comfy chairs for people to want to sit and chat for hours in?
and what about an examination table/couch?
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Jan 31, 2016 10:20:11 GMT 2
Yep, can do all that. The biggest problem is the examination couch. I'd need you to try it out first so I could get a feel of the right size and comfyness. It'd have to be a thorough examination.
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Jan 31, 2016 14:49:22 GMT 2
lol!
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Oct 1, 2016 13:47:10 GMT 2
I always thought this house thing was finished. Then I remembered. Ooops, we've still not done anything to one side of the house. How can you forget that I hear you asking? Well, it's the side we rarely see because the pool and access is on the other side and it is one of those things we kept thinking we'd do another time. Then other things cropped up and it just got left. This is what it looks like today - Bottom right is one of the kitchen windows, bottom left is our bathroom window and as expected, the top ones are bedroom windows, including the very small one right at the top. It is the window to the largest bedroom that has the bed on a balcony. You can also see top right the device, like a small satellite dish, that connects me to the internet. It isn't focused on a satellite but to a transmission mast on a hill a looooong way away across a valley. Not the best way to be connected but it functions for now well enough. If we were staying here we would now get a different method which has become available but wasn't so when we originally went into it. The workers will be coming on Monday, 8am they say, to sort the façade out. I've been told it will take eight to ten working days. We'll see how accurate that is. It always takes longer but as the builder has costed it to just take that long, and as it is a fixed price, it's no skin off my nose how long it takes. Just to keep my hand in it had been decided by a power greater than mine (Mrs M) that the kitchen table needed sorting. It's been there a few years, originally it was to be an outside table but we never found one for a reasonable price that we liked for inside. So it stayed in the kitchen. After having lots of family and friends around since we bought it, it is now quite chipped and the coating I gave it is wearing off. This is what it looks like now. I've given it a coat of varnish/paint remover and I'll strip it down to bare wood, then it'll be stained to look not much different, but newer. That is my project for the next day or so. As we are leaving and won't be back for some time I have a lot of spare wood sitting in the workshop. None of it is particularly good and mainly off-cuts or extra bits I didn't use. I have a plan for some of that as well. One last thing for now - the pool has a small weeping water leak on one side. Luckily I can get at this part of outside as it is in one of the outhouses. I'm going to have half an hour chipping the render away to have a look.
|
|
|
Post by slowcoach on Oct 1, 2016 15:02:34 GMT 2
Do you own the land to that side?
|
|
|
Post by OnlyMark on Oct 1, 2016 15:24:25 GMT 2
Theoretically a section running down the side of the house of 3 or 4 metres is ours. It is in the official, registered plans but as you know, getting everyone involved to agree that is so, is problematic. As long as we don't do anything dramatic like trying to extend our house out that way, then even though we have the right, things stay peaceful.
|
|
|
Post by slowcoach on Oct 1, 2016 17:24:02 GMT 2
I thought I remembered something of that from an earlier page, of which I dunno as there be so many.
We have one exterior wall that we never see, it overlooks a private garden attached to a house above. Well the wall overlooks a lot more than we do as we were not allowed to put in windows. Fortunately the are happy to provide access for building works etc.. Perhaps you don't see it so often as that the view isn't yours?
I must say it has a certain charm: muy rústico.
|
|