It has been an exciting month, construction has now fully replaced demolition.
In a push to get the roof done before the rains started, TCOPSA started working on the main house roof only for there to be several rainy days….. For the main house, the original roof beams are being kept as they are in good condition.
- Stage 1 Clean the beams (vigas in Spanish) and add battens.
- Stage 2 Lay the original flat tiles on the battens – we managed to save enough flat tiles for the whole roof.
- Stage 3 Cover in a thin layer of cement to hold the tiles in place.
After this they will add an insulation layer and then the top layer of curved tiles – again reusing original tiles. Stages 1-3 are now complete for the main house, just the barn and stables to go! These are harder as they need new roof beams.
They have started work on the roof for the area at the back of this house. This includes bike storage (very important), technical rooms, showers and the laundry room. This is much simpler as it uses concrete beams and flat tiles.
Our epic wall is now complete and we spend a lot of time admiring it….. It was hard work and we were astonished by how much stone went into it – all reclaimed from excavating the floor of the main house. We are, I think, looking forward to the next wall…..
With ongoing bureaucratic delays, we agreed with the national park that we could lay the water pipe on top of the ground pending agreement to bury it. All of a sudden 600m of 50mm water pipe arrived at the house and the local water board (Aguas Bocairent) arrived to install it. This was one of the funniest things that has happened so far. First they had to find the main water pipe. They knew roughly where it was and how deep but had to dig four large holes before they found it. Then they had to stretch what was in effect a 600m slinky from our house to the main pipe. To do this they tied one end to their car and drove up the track leaving two men trying to control an uncoiling pipe. So we now have water! No more pumping water into barrels from the well.
Despite all of this excitement, the biggest event of the month was the stonework. We had always assumed that the look of the outside stone would improve but not by very much. The stones seemed small and random and so we did not expect much. However, on a rainy day they started to knock out the old render and replace it. The transformation was spectacular greatly exceeding our expectations. The picture from the back of the house shows the three stages, original, after render was removed and then repointed. We are going to be very proud!
And finally, we realised that many people walk or cycle past the house so we should take the opportunity to tell them who we are and encourage them to follow us on Instagram so we asked TCOPSA to see if they could get a temporary sign made based on Mike’s logo.
