Sorting out the architect... again

What a busy day; I'm late starting this blog so you may be lucky and get a shorter update. I'll not promise anything though.

Really low cloud for the morning

The day dawned quite cold and grey; cold enough that I put jeans and my fleece on first thing. I was up early(ish) as this morning Lubo the Architect (or rather, non-architect) was due at 9am and I needed time to wake up and prepare myself mentally for how I would handle this. I also got an hour or so of paid work done which I need to keep doing to keep up with the weekly hours.

A donkey having a scratch on the table tennis table

The previous time I had shouted at him and I don't like doing this generally so I was going to take a different tack today. While I was waiting and drinking coffee and eating a VERY nice bacon (with the new, slightly more like bacon, not bacon substitute I found) and lettuce butty for breakfast, I noticed that the donkey had come back and paid me a visit and was cropping the grass by the outside table tennis table. I grabbed the camera and snapped a picture and at that point Lubo walked through the gate.

He was looking very chastened and I brought him upstairs and sat him down and gave him the choice of walking away now (and paying back my deposit) with no hard feelings or carrying on and either doing what he is supposed to, or facing being taken for the penalty in the contract. We went through a lot of things which I am not going to go into detail but the upshot of it all was him offering me a discount as an apology (I told him we would review that when he had finished the whole job) and saying that he did want to do it and would do it and apologising.

At one point quite early in the conversation my lady appeared with two cups of the milk and sugar which was unfortunate timing as I was just in the middle of explaining why I was so upset with him and he was saying sorry. She is going to have to get used to the fact that my door will not always be open, once I have a door, and I think I may need to have a door bell which I can deactivate easily.

After finishing all our conversations, setting a firm date in the diary for when he will have everything ready for sending off to Sofia for my PuP (bearing in mind that he is already outside of the time limit for completing the whole project, as by the signed contract) we went to the Obshtina to file the roof plans and also the plans for the fence. This was accomplished quite simply, though we did have to wait for the lady to get to her office (the head architect wasn't there, but her new assistant helped us) and Lubo also got some of the documents which are needed for the PuP while we were there. Why he didn't just do this initially I am not sure.

As I was paying the fee for the filing the mayor of my village came in and I was a bit surprised to hear my name shouted across the room; but that is a lovely thing that he saw me and wanted to greet me and wave. He seems a good man and it was great timing as Lubo was able to quickly explain again the plans for the next few days and he was happy with them.

So I parted with Lubo, with an appointment already made for next Monday and a promise that he will ring or text should there be any issues at all with his progress. He headed for more offices in the Obshtina to collect more paperwork and I started the other chores I had set myself. First of all I went to the mobile phone shop and was able to purchase 15lev of credit for my phone. I then headed into the main town and went past Bila and Lidl, picking up items from both and finding that Lidl is cheaper, but Bila has a better selection, and finally back into my local town to my normal building supplies to get a piece of wood to use as the top section for my blind.

I attempted to describe 2.3m of 50mm doweling and at first then nearly gave me two, 3m lengths of water pipe. I stopped them before they could cut and said "dervo! dervo!" which is wood, and they smiled and sent me round to the builders yard at the back where the man grabbed a pack of roofing timber (1" x 0.5") and I just shrugged and said "OK". It was only 10lev for the lot, and I will need LOADS for the roof so it isn't a bad thing.

This was brought home by putting the back window down and sliding it through, though it hung out of the side too far for me to get through the narrow part of the bridge. I just stopped, moved it to the roof bars, drove over the bridge, and then put it back through the window. Simple.

And so I was home and  I had hot mustard sauce to go with my hotdogs so this was my lunch; I had not been able to find any hotdog rolls anywhere so I just fried the onions and made hotdog sandwiches. They were very tasty indeed.

Starting the burn

I spent a fair bit of time doing paid work around lunch time and then the lure of the sun (no rain today, despite reassurances from AccuWeather that it would definitely be raining in the afternoon) which had come out while I was shopping dragged me from my desk and out to do a few things. First of all I burned the rubbish which had started to pile up again, particularly with the packing materials from the freezer boxes I had bought today.

My digging target for the day

Next I gathered together my spade, pick axe, outside brush and fork and took the wheelbarrow to the side of the path I have just cleared; I was going to start digging over the flower beds there. My first task was to recover the edging slabs which had been knocked over and grown over at some point in the last decade or so. This wasn't a long task but it did help me decide how far I was going to dig today.

The first row dug over and second just started

I chose to do the classic single spit turning over method. First of all I dug out a spit deep and set that soil aside. Then I went along the row, digging a spit x spit of the soil and upending into the previous hole then breaking it apart with the spade. In this way I keep the nutrients from the grass and other weeds in the soil, but hopefully retard their growth so they are easy to pick out once I plant the wanted plants in there.

While I was doing this I was picking up bits of plastic and other burnable rubbish and walking round the back to dump it into the still smouldering fire. There is such a huge job on here to clear the land; the glass and stones that are scattered everywhere are alone enough to stop me thinking of having a lawn mower of any kind, and I am just trying to steadily clear by doing it a little bit at a time.

All the digging done for the day

After not very long, as I got more used to my technique and improved my efficiency, I had dug over all the area that I had chosen to do for today. It was a great feeling to look down and see this freshly dug soil ready for some roses next week once the fence is up. I think I will spend an hour or so every day digging this over the next week and in this way it will all be done for next week.

I had collected a few more bits for the compost so this was emptied on and then it was inside and back to my desk to keep at the day job. I have managed about five hours today which is really good as it puts me ahead of my requirement for the week and means I can focus a bit on helping the men from tomorrow as we do the fence.

The top bar going in

Towards the end of the day, as I was waiting for someone to get back to me at the office in England, I decided I'd quickly hang the blind. Quickly; yeah, I should have guessed. It started off OK with me sliding the 1" x 0.5" timber through the large fold and cutting it to size really quickly; it was actually an almost perfect fit.

Bamboo sliding in easily

I then also put the garden bamboo through the smaller folds (where the blind would fold when it was pulled up) and they fit great as well; I had to chop about 6" off the end of each one so it didn't hang over too much but they did the job admirably.

It was when I came to string the pull ups that I got into strife. First of all I set about doing this with garden string however after I had tied it all into place and offered it up to the window (a mission in its own right) I found that the loops had gaps and the twine kept slipping through them. So I untied it all and got the remains of the nylon rope I used for my washing line and cut these to size. These worked much better and I got as far as hooking the blind temporarily on the window before realising that, because this was much thicker, the hoops were now too small. So I went and got some bigger ones from my store and these worked great.

I have pulled it slightly higher than this

I now had to try and hang the thing and a couple of attempts at doing so failed before I found a length of chain I had lying around (from making something else very badly at an old house; what a shameful memory that table is!) and attached this to the top bar. The blind is now in place however it doesn't really want to return after it has been pulled up (you have to pull it down and it is quite difficult to reach) so I'm just going to leave it as it is for now. It will do the job and I am actually really quite happy with how it looks.

Cheese stuffed peppers; gorgeous

I settled down to do a bit more work and then realised the time; I hadn't even started to think about food but it was already nearing 7pm. I had bought some reduced large chillies from one of the shops today with the idea of roasting them however as I was starting to think about this I decided to stuff them with seranai cheese as well. A little drizzle of oil and some salt and pepper and they were ready for cooking and in the oven. I saved all the seeds and am going to plant some of them tomorrow. They were only in for about 20 minutes and then they were ready and wow they were so tasty. I wolfed them down but was still hungry so now, as I type this, I am waiting for a load of tiny pizzas (and they are TINY) to cook to fill the hole.

So it has been another good successful day, and tomorrow promises to be the same as the men are here to start working on the fence. I'm not sure but I think I may have arranged for Usmivka Mush to come and help as well and that would be a really good thing; the more involved the faster it'll occur.