Beam me up, Hector

So as not to let the roof beams be exposed to too much rain, the builders are doing their best to move swiftly. A drill purchase later and after 3 hours scouring Xalapa for the right drill bits, Hector and co could start securing the beams into place.

We think it looks great!

It looks like the road will be getting tarmacked soon; we went to a meeting about it this evening and found out that together with the rest of the neighbours on the street we'll have to pay 10% of the job...

Tomorrow's job: plant four trees! A guava, a peach, a lime and an avocado.

Last post before the roof

It might seem like not a lot has been done over the past month, but it has been rainy season and the guys have been plastering quite a lot inside the house. It's gone up in height a bit too, ready for the roof. The room at the top (the study) is going to be stunning - it might be worth considering as a bedroom as views are great and you can almost see 360 degrees around you!

The garden is looking lovely and green. Ferns, beans, strawberries and a couple of young trees that we planted next door are all enjoying the sun and rain.

There's a shot here from the East angle - so that's the front door in the middle with the living/dining room on the left and the kitchen on the right, below the main bedroom and its balcony. You can perhaps appreciate just how much light (or how many windows) there's going to be, particularly up in the study.

The roof timber was delivered today so the next installment should be exciting!

Gardening

We've also been taking advantage of the sunny days between the rains to do a bit of work in the garden.

Saturdays have been spent working on the path and filling in a horizontal terrace - in the long-run there should be at least two, if not three terraces, but it's hard work wheelbarrowing earth uphill!

I've also been relocating ferns - it's not to clear in the picture, but the sloping beds nearest the house are now covered in ferns. I'm hoping this will help to hold all the soil in place, as well as looking rather luscious.

There are so many pretty plants growing already, like this purple flower, that it almost feels a shame to bring in new plants. I think I'll try to reach a balance between what grows naturally and what would be useful and nice to look at. And first of all, trees and the like...

The current plan includes lemon/lime, guava, peach, avocado, macadamia nut, and black pepper... yummmmm.

In the Dog House

The neighbourhood dogs certainly seem to feel very at home in the house! Canica (the black dog) and her pal are testing out the kitchen, and have become very good at showing us the way up the stairs... Speaking of which, we now have stairs all the way up to the top of the house.

The builders are now just finishing off the walls at the top of the house - the stairwell, a study and a balcony that will look down the street.

On the garden side of the house, Hector is getting things ready to put the roof on.

You can also see the big arch in the living/dining room area. It's going to be a rather nice room with views up into the garden and plenty of light.

This week we've also been discussing kitchen fittings and a fitted closet for one of the bedrooms, which makes moving in feel that little bit closer.

Pretty things

Second post today, but I was quite camera-happy.

The view out of our bedroom window is going to be pretty nice, as you can see here!

The water filters have been in place quite some time now and the plants are now looking very happy; we're looking forward to them flowering.

We often find ourselves parking at our favourite neighbour's (Hugo's!) and today we happened to notice his beautiful orchids.

How do you translate "colado", anyway?

Things are looking lovely at the moment - you can almost see the smiles on the plants when they get loads of rain and loads of sunshine in the same day. Yesterday the 4 builders and 4 helpers did the "colado" of the second floor (i.e. they put in the the second floor), as well as the reinforcing struts and arch - should look nice when those blocks are removed!

The view from the very top is great, although Daisy finds it too scary to walk to the edge! Fortunately Hector doesn't seem to get vertigo so he's been doing a lot of work perched metres up in the air as you can see in one of these photos.

There's a shot of the back of the house too; Daisy and I have been adding some earth to widen a flat space, ready for planting.

Word has it that the council is coming this coming week to start on the pavements in the street, and when they've done that they're supposed to be starting on the road... Fingers crossed!

Upstairs

We are now the proud owners of a usable set of stairs. Even in rough concrete they look nice, but once they get some wood or tiles on them, they should be very pleasant to look at.

Having stairs also means that we now have very easy access to the first floor... as does the dog who came to inspect the building work on Friday! In the dog photo you can also see the arch that leads from the kitchen/living room to the stairs and the bathroom and bedroom at the back of the house.

Looking down from upstairs, you can start to appreciate the size of the windows in the living room area. It's still an open space at the moment, but there will, eventually, be a wooden mezzanine covering around half of this space, as is shown in the original plans

Moving up in the world

The past few weeks have seen a lot of visible change in the building work. With the floor set, the builders have been working on the walls of the first floor. Quite a view from up there!

We're a little concerned about how imposing the house might look once it's finished: there's still another mini floor to go, and it's already looking tall... The sooner we can get planting trees, the better!

And we have a first floor!

After a bit of a difficult time convincing the builders to get a grip and work hard, (after having caught them pretty tipsy during work hours), things have been moving on well recently and we had 8 on the go for one day in order to finish the cement work of the first floor, including the little overhanging balcony in the main bedroom.

The street is still a no-go area with a vehicle, (because of drainage works), so the guys recently had to take over a ton of cement up the steep track on their backs... Not ideal, but pretty impressive.

You can see the leaves in the bathroom ceiling; the idea is to peel them off leaving what should be a nice, subtle effect.

There's a shot of el Maestro Saúl applying a light layer of cement in what will be the living room.

It's all looking much more like a house now, I'm sure you'll agree!

Filters are done!

Posting this a bit late, but we took these photos on the 3rd March 2011.

Hector and co have done a nice job of the filters, they're looking good and working fine, or so it would seem so far. There are some plants living in one of the sections too.

Meanwhile the strengthening metalwork is getting sorted ready to take the weight of the cement floor, and to reinforce the walls.

Walls fly up

It's pretty exciting to see how fast this part of the process is going - it feels like we've almost got a ground floor finished! In this pic, Horacio the architect is checking a few things over with the Maestro Hector.

Daisy and I have been spent the last couple of Saturdays working on the gently sloping paths that lead up behind the house, and it has already made the space feel much more accessible and useable. The idea that the paths with a 10% gradient will be used for walking, and the horizontal parts will be used for planting trees and other useful plants. Daisy has done most of the digging while Steve has been struggling to dig and axe out a monster of a tree trunk and its roots.

We have walls

It's all go at the mo, and doesn't it show, yo!

The builders are keeping to their word about the fact that the walls would fly up once they started on them. This week has seen pretty big changes!

We spent Tuesday morning measuring, marking and digging for the path at the back of the house; it has a 10% gradient all the way up to the top of the plot. Plenty of work before it's finished (and probably a few more blisters on the way), but it should all be work we can accomplish ourselves.

We're now getting a feeling for how tall the house will look from the front. Hopefully it won't look too imposing once our trees have grown.

Filters in the drizzle

Things look pretty good to us at the moment - all the underfloor goings-on are finished and some of the walls have come up a bit, although we halted their progress when there was some confusion on the size of one of the windows.

Also, there still is a bit of work to do on other parts of the land before the house can be fully focussed on, so the builders have been working hard on what will serve both as a little retention wall and the compartments of the filter for grey water.

We watched 10 mins progress and noticed how quickly skilled hands can create a good, smooth but solid cement base, as shown in the before and after photos here. It's good to know that when cement is drying it's actually good for there to be dampness and even drizzle in the air, as Xalapa's winter has finally decided to set in, at least for a few days. Bit of a shame that it coincided with some lethal shootings though!

On firm ground

While Steve was busy building sandcastles, Hector and the lads were working on bigger and better things...

15 x 4 metres of polythene were cut up to fit the respective rooms of the ground floor, and laid on their sand beds, before being covered in what will be the base of our floors. Then, with waterproof concrete used in the first two layers of bricks, the next step of our damproofing (essential in Xalapa) has almost been completed.

Things at the lower end of the plot now look slightly more natural, although we were recently alarmed to notice how many frogs had committed suicide in our drain next to the garage. (Photos not yet available).