Tale of the Patio Wall

Day 9 - Tuesday 10^th October

I was up at 7.45 am ready for builders, who arrived on dot of 8 a.m. again. Francicho and Juan on the roof . I decided to draw some scale plans of the kitchen and bathroom and patio showing the location of electricity and water points, as these are the next jobs, or so we thought ……..little did we know !! I popped out to English Stationers to buy a ruler and some graph paper, and came back to measure up. J was doing some scraping, and got her to help me measure up exact measurements, including wall thicknesses.

Agreed with J the size of the kitchen (2.7 m) , leaving the rest of the kitchen to form the patio, and drew a scale plan of kitchen with rough locations of washing machine, fridge and sink, the patio, and how the door to the patio would open (……outwards into the kitchen against the wall).

Meanwhile, Franchico climbed through the hole onto the kitchen roof and started removing the asbestos roof and demolishing a wall with a sledgehammer. It then occurred to him to ask us whether the wall should be knocked down…….. and as we were’nt sure, he phoned Ricardo, who spoke with J , and the upshot of this was that the wall was staying…….??

I went back to my drawing and Ricardo appeared soon afterwards , and wanted to know where the kitchen would end, which was where the patio wall would be. J asked me to get my half drawn plans to show him…………luckily, we had agreed the kitchen would be 2.7 m long, and Ricardo marked this on the wall for Juan who had silently appeared from the roof for this impromptu site meeting.

Meanwhile, I showed Juan where the door would be (offset to the right to allow the door to open against the wall). Ricardo then left as quickly as he had appeared, the men seeming to know what was required and Franchico started immediately demolishing and drilling, at which point J wanted to leave immediately and leave them to it.

W went to the Punto Limpio with some more recycling, and got some diesel for the first time this month……the everlasting tank , and diesel only 90c per litre, so very cheap motoring. We then went to a Tile and Bathroom shop on a Poligono Industrial (Industrial Estate) to look at tiles to get ideas ……loads of choice but difficult to know which were floor tiles or wall tiles.

Arriving back at the house to see what had been done today, J was puzzled at the position of the patio door. The patio wall had been built with a 80cm door space offset to the right, rather than in the middle as J had shown in her sketch plans….

In the morning rush of scale plans, urgent decisions, and getting out of the house quickly, J had never seen my plan showing the door offset to the right, which I had shown Juan. Needless to say, she was not happy about it, …..read between the lines here …… but gradually became reconciled to the design, and started to change some of her ideas about location of pots and plants etc.