Video of new flat, 26 March 2009

Building progress, 26 March 2009 from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Thursday 26 March 2009

Quite a few things has happened since I last blogged. the ceilings in the apartment are almost finished, the stairs have been cast, the electrician and plumber have been and gone. I think the next step is probably tiles. In the mean time things have gotten very busy and hectic in front of the "old part" of the house.The lawn is unfortunately not looking as healthy as it did a week ago...The 2 bougainvillas have been transplanted and don't look to happy eitther, but maybe they'll survive. The irrigation pipe is lying there, half broken, part closed up. I still have to decide tomorrow what can be done there. The foundation for the pillars for the little portico in front of the apartment has also been cast. Anneliese has made a video clip of the apartment which we'll also put on this space - either tonight or tomorrow.

Day 26 - 16.03.09

The other half of Africa that wasn't here on Thursday, was on site today. It is now already 19h10 and the guys are still busy plastering. They have almost finished plastering the outside to the front and the street. The back and the inside still remains to be done. (Still no staircase - must ask Alan about that...)

The electrician was busy in our garage most of the morning - connecting the telephone and the geyser connections for the hot water.

The roofing guys came rather late - as on Friday - and they had just started taking off the roof from the left, when the rain came pouring down. There was 30% rain forecasted for tomorrow, but this morning it didn't even look like rain - we had 2 loads of washing on the line which we had to rescue. Apparently tomorrow they only come with a bakkie - they have already cut most of the sheets today, so I suppose they don't need the lorry then. So tomorrow they should be here earlier.

We had another mishap today - no broken windows, but a hole in our ceiling....They dropped the roll of sisalation through our ceiling. I haven't spoken to Alan about it yet. There will be little spots here and there on the ceiling which will have to be repaired once the roof is on. Specially where there are nails in the ceiling, the white cretestone covering breaks off from all the hammering. So there's lots of little white bits all over the house.

Day 21 - 25, 09 - 13.03.09

On Monday the window between our room and the new apartment was removed und closed up with bricks. The next day the window to the front was also removed, Atlantic Aluminium came to take the measurements and manufacture the window. The gaping hole was blocked up with a wooden board until Thursday, when they came to install the window. Thereafter the plaster on the in- and outside was also finished off.

On Thursday we had half of Africa working here, installing the rooftrusses. Alan's guys built up the wall between the house and the apartment, so that one is unable to climb into the roof of the house and walk over to the apartment and climb down through the trap door.

Today, Friday, the guys from "Seamless Roofing - on site rolled and formed roof sheets" are putting on the sheets and the "tin foil" isolation. Are we going to put in thermoboard too?

This is a very interesting process to watch. The lorry has these huge rolls of flat sheeting on the back, as well as a little computer. Once they have calculated how long and wide the sheets must be, the order is typed in and the sheets are shaped with lips on the sides as they are being rolled out! Unfortunately the photo is not very clear. The computer sits to the left at the back of the lorry.

Day 20 - 06.03.09

This is the view from our bedroom window, looking accross to Warrington's house.

Here, closest to the camera, you can see the wall between the staircase and our new bedroom. The window at the left is that of the study looking towards the street. Our bedroom's doorframe is already in position. You happy with plain white doors? No mouldings or whatever?

20 Days - it feels as if it is a long time and as if they should have done more - but with mostly only 3 guys working....

Day 16 - 18, 02 - 04.03.09

The last 3 days they've done quite a bit as far as the walls are concerned.

The window in the first picture was made to match the existing one in our bedroom, but now that it is finished, I feel it should have been a little wider. But maybe once the actual frames are in and the plastering has been done, it should look ok. The metal strips you can see sticking out at the top, gets tied unto the roof trusses - so that the wind cannot lift the roof off! As you can see, the right "leg" of the triangle(gable) over our existing bedroom, will have to be shortened to fit in with the roof leading to the right. Might look a little funny, but I suppose we'll just have to get used to it. The bricks on the side there have just got sand between them, so when they start connection the two buildings, they have to lift the roof there and then they can pull out those bricks again. It is just so that the roof can be left to the end as much as possible.

In the last picture you should be able to see what I meant with having changed the windows. There was supposed to be one window only and that would have been in the bathroom. There is now a smaller window in the bathroom and the same size window in the study, looking east, so the study will also get a bit of morning sun. This place is going to be darn cold in winter....