Since the last post a lot has happened. So many months of planning, waiting and worrying have finally started to bear fruit. Such a relief!
For some reason the council insists on the entire plan being printed on one long sheet. This leads to much slapstick comedy when the wind is blowing.
The first job was heartbreaking but necessary: we had to cut down some fig trees. :( We lost about fifteen of them and had to relocate three olive trees. Olive trees, we were told, are very tough and will tolerate relocation as long as you prune them hard and give them lots of water afterwards. Time will tell whether this advice is correct.
Looking up the block at some of the lost fig trees that had to go in order to make way for the foundation slabs.
The second job was improving the driveway. With last winter’s rains we had some erosion and it had become more like a goat track than a road.
Our driveway: the “before” photo.
We needed to do something if we were going to get heavy machinery, cement mixers, and delivery trucks up there.
Excavator starting on the driveway. Jason really wanted a turn but was not seen as responsible enough.
One of twelve truckloads of gravel to make a nice compacted base for the drive.
The “after” photo: from goat-track to motorway. We like it a lot and it’s so wide that it immediately solves some of our future parking problems.
A view from the top, showing how the drive curves around to allow access to the cafe. This was about halfway through. More truckloads of gravel were dumped on the right side of this picture.
Then the excavator moved up the hill to start digging out the soil for the three buildings’ foundations and the pool.
Digging out the base for the cafe and first two rooms.
We had mountains of soil that we didn’t know what to do with. At first it just got pushed over the edge of our hillside, but there was so much of it we were in danger of causing an avalanche onto the road. So we had about 20 lorry loads worth of soil taken away, and lots of neighbours turned up with tractors and helped themselves to a bit. We did keep some, though, for the mud plaster.
“And you could have it all, my empire of dirt…”
Rise of the machines.
The guys worked incredibly fast and before we knew it they were putting formwork, steel reinforcement, and the first loads of concrete in.
Early layer of concrete. This not the real foundation slab, just a bottom layer to make a good surface for the concrete formwork.
Pool starting to take shape.
Formwork for the second bungalow. One day this will be rooms three and four.
Underlay slab for our house, right at the top of the hill.
Reinforced concrete beams that will support the restaurant. The step up in the slab is so that rooms one and two will sit a little higher and not cut too deeply into the hillside.
Improvised tent so there’s somewhere dry to store gear and make tea on rainy days. The workers were sceptical of Jason’s plan to build this out of scrap wood but so far it is holding up.
Panorama from the top of the orchard, looking west. Click for full size.
Another big job that is now done was to lay 66 metres of concrete pipe in the ditch next to the main road and then cover it over. The idea is to carry away the rain water that comes down the hill, and also to stop our new driveway from acting as a dam. Each pipe section was 1.5 metres long and 80 cm in diameter. I am so glad that this job is over now as it was the scariest and most dangerous of all the work done so far. Watching the excavator lift and swing a very heavy concrete pipe in the air, hanging from a chain, 44 times in succession while traffic was still passing on the road was very nerve-racking! I don’t think we remembered to take a photo of this job because we were so busy watching it nervously.
“Before” photo, taken in March 2014.
After: you can’t see it, but there’s 66 metres of 80 cm concrete pipe buried on the right-hand side of the road there. Smoothing it over afterwards makes more handy parking spaces.
During these exciting times we had my parents and Jason’s uncle John and aunt Marg staying with us. In the evenings one or two drinks were had in order to celebrate the start of the building work.
John and Marg inspecting the site.
Jason tells me I have to add cat photos to a blog post or people will complain. So, here they are. The kittens are getting bigger every day. They have names now, but we are still trying to adopt them out.
Panda.
Pablo.
Panini.
Coco.
All together.
And finally, a big thanks to JP who sent us a wonderful 24mm lens that took most of the photos above. Cheers, JP, we love it!
