Tiles are one of the big transformations in any building project and this has certainly been true for us. When the first delivery of tiles arrived we started to realise the scale of the task. This delivery was half of the total, we have 18,000kgs of tiles! The first stage was to agree how the tiles will line up with walls, stairs and other tiles. This is more complex than we had thought and involved a long discussion between us, the architects and the builders. The tilers then started laying tiles on the top floor and in the bathrooms. It is astonishing to watch them work as it happens so fast.
The self levelling concrete went down on the ground floor and the barn is really starting to look like a room. It didn’t take long before it was a mess again but it was beautiful while it lasted. A cat seems to have adopted the house, encouraged by the builders and Andrea who feed it (!), and it clearly walked in the concrete before it was set.
The plasterers started and they are definitely the messiest team! The process is quite different to UK consumer plastering as in the UK they are normally just skimming over plaster board and so they are only applying a very thin layer. Here there is no plaster board and so they are applying plaster direct onto the brick work. The plaster layer is about 1cm thick they use a plaster pump to spray the plaster onto the walls. This is much faster but makes an incredible mess. Plaster goes everywhere and there is then a big clean up operation afterwards. You can see this, for example, on the ends of the beams. We made the mistake of leaving the doors in place and these got covered too. However, the transformation is fantastic and the top floor is really starting to feel like a house rather than a building site.