Front Doors, Ruin and Previous Owner

Monday 12th February

It was always going to be a busy day, and so it proved. Juan and Franchico arrived at 8 am and started removing the front doors and frame (very rusty), which took an hour or so, and then started cementing the new 1.8 metre walls on the porch. Ruin Man opened up the ruin first thing and disappeared. I scraped paint off the outer terrace walls and J did bathroom tile cleaning, whilst waiting for Antonio.

Ricardo turned up 10 am and J went through the snag list with him, and he was not too perturbed, and said most would be finished this week……!! We offered to help Franchico clear building rubble from the ruin, which had accumulated over the last 4 months and last week from the ill fated tube fiasco.

After an hour or so of heavy rubble lifting in buckets to Ricardo’s trailer, we decided to take the doors down to Antonio, as he had not turned up by 11 am, and the frame had to be made, and the frame/doors refitted by 4 pm. Antonio was surprised to see us, and said his “friend” would have collected them in an hour or so……manyana I guess. I told him we would have to postpone fitting the railings today, as the cement would still be wet on the new walls…….no problema …!!

Back to the ruin for another 2 hours or so. Whilst we were there, a chap turned up, who was the previous owner of J’s house, and trying to tell us to do something. J caught the odd words such as Mi Casa (My house), Abogado (Solicitor), Problema , and went into a flat spin, think he had come back to claim his property back after 6 years, now all the work was done.

Eventually got hold of Ricardo to speak to him, and it turned out he was being hassled for 4 years property back tax , which J had already sorted with her Solicitor. I took a fraught J for bacalao tapas, and when we returned at 2 pm, the doors had returned encased in a new frame, and welded to keep the doors in position. The railings and window grill had also arrived for fitting Wednesday.

I supervised the fitting of front door, which started at 3 pm and Juan finishing cementing at 5.30 pm…..Fitting the doors was cumbersome and exhausting, as the whole unit must have weighed 100 kilos, and it took 3 of us to lift in position. It was clear it was NOT going to easy, as the frames had 3 x 10 cm steel ties, which had to fit into the wall.

Franchico and I held the unit upright on the outside, whilst Juan drilled out huge channels in the walls to take the ties from the inside. Once it was in position, Juan removed the welds holding the doors in position, and they quickly splayed out of position and the doors wouldn’t shut. Juan eventually managed to get doors and frame vertical and working, and cemented in the ties.