Rest of Week 2

Day 10 - Wednesday 11^th October

The Builders arrived yet again on dot of 8 am , and started work again in kitchen, so breakfast was a problem. We decided to walk to a Hotel on the outskirts of town. Counted steps on way back…..about 3,000 of the 10,000 we should do each day, so we had achieved good part of total there and back.

Back at house about 10 am, but no sign of Ricardo, so we decided to go to the sprawling Poligono Industrial of Malaga ( hour on fast motorway ) looking for bathroom and kitchen ideas. We had a quick coffee and sandwich there, and spent several hours getting a kitchen quote and looking at the huge warehouses there. On to Hipercor a huge Hypermarket which also does kitchens and bathroom stuff…..makes the big French hypermarkets look tiny.

Back to the house for 2 pm but still no Ricardo, so off to our favourite Bar for lunch ( a tapas of bacalao ( fried cod), 2 breads and 3 olives for 1 euro, and then sat in park enjoying the sunshine! Back to house for 4 pm and Ricardo was there with his quadbike. The patio wall was now complete, and the remaining wall demolished, and the wall on the roof rebuild (the one demolished for crane access), and the tile grouting nearly complete.

Ricardo informed us that as tomorrow was a National holiday (fiesta) ….( the Day of Hispanity),they would not be working on the house as it would be too noisy for our neighbours. However, they would be working at the other house in the country……..Roberto doesn’t believe in days of rest !!

Day 11 - Thursday 12^th October

We had a sort of lie in as it was the National holiday of celebrating Spanishness I guess…..rather like the “British Day” Gordon Brown has proposed, where he wants us all to celebrate our Britishness I think. J then did a lot of washing by hand and I made an extra washing line with the crane, as no longer erected.

J did a few hours scraping in the front room while I caught up on the blog. Ricardo appeared briefly on his quad bike to collect some tools, including a large tile-cutter balanced on his lap……could be nasty if he braked suddenly or came off the bike !!

We had a long walk out to the outskirts of the town, and noticed a lot of the older Spanish were dressed up and off to posh restaurants for special lunches (2pm start), whereas the bars were packed with younger people ………so that was how they were celebrating their Spanishness I guess. We just had our 1 euro bacalao tapas for lunch...........we’re on a budget !!

As it was hot and sunny (still 30 C here) we decided to just make the most of a quiet afternoon in the house, without the builders!

Day 12 - Friday 13 October

We were woken by the unexpected arrival of Juan and Franchico at 8 am , as we had thought they were working elsewhere. Quick tidy of kitchen and dining room , and Juan went up to roof, whilst Franchico took up large bricks to the kitchen roof.

However, they had a call from Ricardo and disappeared at 9 am to go to one of his other 2 jobs, so we only had them for an hour……….which was hardly worth it ……just the last few tiles on the roof as progress, and a few bricks transferred to the kitchen roof.

We spent the morning paint stripping in the Dining Room. I popped out to buy paint-stripper (quita-pinturas), but it was’nt very effective. However, we achieved quite a lot, as the picture shows.

All in all, not so much progress this week………..will keep you posted next week. Probably have to move out to Ricardo’s garage flat next week, which will be good, as living in a building site has not been easy or relaxing.

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.

Start of Week 2

Day 6 - Saturday 7th October

We spent a couple of hours clearing out the kitchen, and taking some old furniture to the Punto Limpio (Tip). This is an interesting place for the green and ecofriendly…. the Spanish are clearly into recycling, with nearly 20 different bins for recyclable items, including surprisingly, medical X Rays…….I’ll do a post on the Punto Limpio at a later date.

Since J offered us to Ricardo as paint scrapers, J put in several hours scraping off paint and plaster, starting with the stairs leading to the roof terrace.

Day 7 - Sunday 8^th October

We decided to have a day off , and went down to the coast to sort out my first blog posting and a few hours on the beach.

Thee were a lot of women and children in Spanish traditional flamenco dresses, the men in tight breeches, boots and hats ….some on horses, some in traditional carriages and other on scooters, either driving or as pillion passengers, and others just promenading. Very colourful. Probably related to the Feria (Fair) over the weekend which we missed.

Day 8 - Monday 9th October

Juan and Franchico arrived as church bell was chiming 8.00 am and straight up on to roof (arriba as they say meaning “on the top”). Ricardo arrived soon after to supervise, but didn’t stay long.

We went out for the day to get out of their way, and to get a few jobs done.

They left at 4 pm having grouted tiles and edging, leaving about 1/3^rd of the terrace still to be completed. They had also removed a bit of the asbestos roof above the kitchen, which gave a better idea of how the mezzanine room was formed, and the remaining problem of how the bathroom and verandah roof could be formed and accessed.