Weekend and more welding

Another Monday flies round at high speed, almost before you realised the weekend had begun, and so here I am again after just putting Rosie to bed and I'm going to write some more up and put some more pictures in here. Onwards

Olden Beat kicking off the evening

How tall is Rosie?

Colourful trees on the back bank

Looking down and across from the bench

Everyone in Rosie's play tent

SpaceX make history

So, the weekend. The pattern of the weather continued with heavy rain at times and at other times lovely sunshine. It was a busy day on Saturday with a lovely extended family Zoom call and various other things going on like cleaning the lounge and in the evening I got to go out and see Venko and his band, Olden Beat, playing in a local bar. It was nice to get to see them all again. I got home in time to just miss the SpaceX launch but got to watch the first manual flying test. Very exciting. Sunday was another mixed day of weather, though it stayed nice most of the day and I was able to get to the back bank with Rosie for a stroll and to look at the views which was lovely. We also remembered to mark how tall Rosie was on her lion height thing which she has started to notice and enjoy bashing. The other major notable thing was being able to watch the Crew Dragon docking with the ISS while holding Rosie - it was an amazing thing and prompted me to watch the whole livestream, then go to the virtual Feis Ile (we should be on Islay now) and then some other videos from whisky friends. It was a much needed wind down after quite a stressful week.

My idea

Their idea (or my understanding of it)

Grinding for the day begins

Three lengths, not just one, for better strength and support

And so to today. The men were slightly more on time today, which was good, and I grabbed Bekir immediately to talk through the plans for the steel. I was worrying that they way they were doing it wouldn't be as strong as my idea however after some tooing and froing, and a few mind-changes, we came to a total understanding and a better idea than either had had up to then. So they started grinding away and putting the long cross piece in place. I got another quick video of them lifting up, this time using a rope to help which was sensible.

The full 10m span in place

Central column positioned carefully

Bekir welding, and wearing a mask

Sally fixing the intermediate upright

Safe welding practices

I was watching Rosie while Angela went to try and finally sort her vaccines out (which she did - YAY!) and so I missed seeing how the three men managed to lift, on their own, the 10m length of 10x10 box section steel, but lift it they did. The way we are doing this front span is to have the welding joins over the top of the columns, to give support underneath, and they did the welding on the floor before lifting it all. With this up the next step was the middle column and from there they used a line to work out the pitch of the roof correctly and put the two intermediate, shorter, top columns in place as well. The biggest thing for me was seeing both Sally and Bekir voluntarily using the welding mask. Wonders never cease.

Bekir drilling for the return beam

Accidentally perfectly positioned

Using the tall scaffold

Arty shot for the end of the day

With the metal work done they moved to the next task which was drilling into the main wall so they can insert and secure the next huge steel elements, the beams going from the intermediate uprights across to the main building. Totally against all the odds, and a surprise to everyone, was the fact that when they broke through they found that pretty nearly the beam would sit flush with the attic floor, which is a 30cm thick concrete slab and very strong. We couldn't have planned it better. Before the end of the day they had drilled to satisfaction the first hole, and were just making a start on the second. The ridgeline will go into the existing roof which will be another interesting challenge.

Rosie on the run with the puppies

Watching two lambs and a sheep

Angela's first lettuce successes

And so the time was for me to run around the garden after Rosie and we had a lovely time, she's becoming more and more of a cheeky madam and a fun character to have around. She still loves the sheep, however, and stood or crouched watching these two lambs and their mother for a fair while before the sheep decided to move on. She also climbed up her slide steps on her own a few times to slide down, and had a swing. Angela was also amazed at being able to grow lettuce, as you can see. We need to eat it all now!

So there you are; hopefully more to come tomorrow as we push forwards on this project. I'm hoping to have work so we can keep the men on (and get solar and a borehole so we can disconnect from the mains utilities as soon as possible.)

Such lovely friends

Well it got to late on Wednesday before I remembered I had to do this update so I'm going to type as fast as I can so it doesn't completely dominate the evening. It has been a brilliant first half of the week though so there's a bit to tell you about.

Friends, and what lovely ones

So the main title of this update was an obvious one based on what has happened so far this week. I'll get right down to it.

The queue in KAT for registering vehicles

On Monday I received the phone call from KAT to say "when you are ready, come down to do your trailer" and so on Tuesday I went, slightly nervous at going on my own, to attempt to complete this process. I had a bit of a nightmare when I first got to the carpark as there was no space at all and I even almost got stuck because of an idiotically parked (UK number plated) car and so I drove off to try and insure Julian. That also didn't work as I was informed he was already insured. I almost went home in a huff but decided to give parking on the street near KAT a try and so I headed back over there. I parked fine and walked in to the main inspection area to try and find Ivan, the big boss who had rung me back. As I made my way towards the office I noticed, standing talking to a crowd of people, our friend Venko the musical policeman. He greeted me as I approached and, to cut a long story slightly shorter, ended up helping me from that point until I drove off with the new number plate on the trailer. This should have been a slightly shorter process than it ended up being but we missed the boss going on his lunch and so had to wait for him to come back. Venko, undeterred, took me home to his house where his wife cooked us lunch and he showed me his guitars and other things. It was a lovely thing and so welcome, considering how nervous I was, and also reinforced the friendship which is so important to us here. Now I hope to see him again soon and have made sure he knows we'll be inviting him over for dinner when he is free next.

The Little Lady about to roll out super thin pastry

Eating the end result, and they were marvelous

The second part of this is about our lovely neighbours. When I got back from KAT yesterday I went out to take the daily photograph (I've still not missed a day, though I've got close a couple of times, including today) and was greeted by the Little Lady with some post for me. She also talked about coffee so, after A finished her file that she was on with, we went over. It slowly dawned on us that I had misunderstood her and she hadn't been inviting us for coffee at all, as they were having their rest period. No matter, they served us a cup each and we had a nice sit there. I asked what she had meant and picked up that she wanted us to come over at about 7pm so we got ourselves ready and presented ourselves again at that time. I'm now pretty sure that I once again misunderstood her however, true to form, they welcomed us and the Little Lady busied herself making some banitchkas which she fried on the stove and served, piping hot and delicious, to us to be washed down with home made ayran. They didn't eat with us so after we finished, and waited a little while, we headed off again. It's so hard with the language sometimes to really grasp what you're being told however the welcome they give, even when we descend unexpectedly, is wonderful.

We are very lucky to have friends like Venko, Lyubo and our neighbours, local and so helpful and generous.

Building stuff

The mornings are growing noticeably brighter, earlier, and this is focusing our minds (well, certainly mine but then I'm the worrier) on the rapidly approaching building season. I've been in touch with the building firm who did the balcony, and who are going to be doing the basketball court and various other things and so that is in hand (I'm actually currently owing them an email back which I need to get done) but we've been doing things ourselves as well to get ready.

A making sure her wine rack will fit

What she did; isn't it awesome!

On Monday A had a very quiet work day and so she spent a fair while playing around with online kitchen design tools to get some ideas for layout. One of the main drivers of this is our thinking about the flooring; we had originally discussed having real slate down and we haven't been able to find any in Bulgaria. While we may be able to get it in the UK and shipped out we need to get this organised sooner rather than later if we're going to. After this process we think we've decided against it and will just use slate-looking tiles instead. It's been a really useful process to go through and we both love the design she came up with. Now I need to work out what sinks I'm having in my washing up zone; again I was thinking I'd need a new Belfast sink but I'm going to try and get away without it by making use of stuff we already have here.

Lots of dust in this scrape

One hoovered out showing how deep she got

All the rubble I removed from the room

Other than this I have continued making progress in Sassy's old room, which will be the temporary (we think) home for my modelling activities. That is model railway and airplanes, not me having photographs taken. As you know I have begun test-laying the suspended floor, and filling the Sassy holes, and on Monday lunchtime I went in with the hoover and finished cleaning out the room, hoovering most of the loose flooring away in two Henry loads of dust. It was very bad in there and in places she had got right through the loose flooring down to the reinforcement layer. What a rabbit.

A making use of the new mixer paddle motor

All the holes (I think) are now filled

With this cleaning done I distracted A to come and do a mix for me as this is one of her jobs. The new paddle mixer I had bought last week went into action for the first time (after the disappointment of finding that the SDS hadn't been fixed I went and bought a specific tool for this) and it proved itself by being much more stable while rotating and mixing the teracol into a super smooth consistency that was perfect for me. There was so much to do that it ended up being two large buckets of the stuff, and two bags of powder, to complete the job and it has been fenced off (to prevent puppy-paw-prints) and left since then to dry. It's nearly dry now so my plan to do the floor on Saturday looks good. The other night I got into bed feeling really tied and then my brain switched on and one of the things I solved was the problem with supporting the chipboard floor successfully. I'll be giving my ideas a try on the currently laid floor before Saturday, to check out if it'll work.

We've another raised bed to put in and today I went to measure it up to start cutting but found that the remaining lengths are just not long enough to create one exactly the same dimensions as before. I'm in the process now of working out whether I can use the same size windows (of which I have many) or if I'll need to use smaller ones for this next one. Either way they'll only be slightly smaller so I'll probably begin digging out the trench for it as my lunch time task tomorrow.

More sky

As per usual there has been a wonderful show put on for us by nature so far this week. I'll go through this chronologically as it makes best sense.

The sun rises behind the ridge and past clouds

A clear moon shot, but you can't really see the clouds glowing

The clouds glowing, but you can't see the moon details

Monday was a really excellent day for my sky photographs. In the morning I was summoned to grab my camera in a hurry as A opened the curtains and saw the sunrise. I snapped a very quick picture from Room 13's window and then legged it onto the balcony in time to capture the blazing sun behind clouds. Stunning. That night the moon rise was just as majestic though far harder to photograph. You'll have to mentally combine the two photographs to get an idea of what we saw. I need to learn how to capture the moon glow on the clouds around a super-bright full moon that just overloads longer exposures. I played with many settings and these are the best two I got to show it off as we saw it.

Tuesday morning dusting on the balcony

Tuesday was taken up with KAT and the neighbours, as already described. It was forecast for about 2cm of snow over night and into the morning but when we woke up it was to just a light dusting and that was about all we got. While I was in town it snowed quite a lot but didn't settle and the slightly sketchy hill descent I survived (with the braked trailer making it even more interesting pushing me down the hill) was completely clear when I came back, The snow didn't even really last the day and was completely now there is almost no snow left anywhere.

Wednesday morning sun appears

No sign of the hotel my parents stayed in

Stunning colour to the mist

The clouds slowly clearing, mid morning

Sunset panorama from the roof terrace

This morning was a frosty start which is something we've not seen for a while due to snow cover. The sunrise was again a beautiful thing to behold and that favourite effect of mine, the glow on the mist, was much in evidence. The cover went a bit higher than it normally does, though it didn't climb to our altitude, and so the hotel my parents stayed in was hidden, and all but the very top of the radio tower up the valley was also behind clouds. A stunning start. It did cloud over after this, however, and so was a bit chilly (the puppies spent almost the whole morning huddled by the fire) but then it cleared and became a really stunning day. The sunset, captured just as it was starting to fade, was also a beautiful one and I'm glad I made the effort to run up to the roof terrace to capture it.

Animals

Again, as usual, the animals have provided us with much joy in the last few days. Today we managed to get back out onto the top bank (thanks to A making the decision and enforcing it) and threw the toys for Rambo and the girls for quite a long time, which we all really enjoyed.

Waiting for their bread

It isn't all play time, though. Every day we feed bread and other kitchen scraps to the chickens and ducks to supplement their corn and grain main feed. The puppies expect to get theirs at the same time and know, at roughly that time of day when either of us goes and stands at the work surface, that they will almost certainly get some bread. They do wait very patiently but sometimes get a little excited. Rambo also gets a chunk though of course he has to wait til we get outside. The birds are the most excited about all of this and cluster by the gate as soon as they hear any movement, whatever time of day, hoping it is feeding time.

A tiny "wind" or "cock" egg one of our chickens produced

Talking of the birds they have continued to give us excellent produce in terms of eggs all through this winter. We've seen many comments on groups on facebook talking about how people's birds have stopped producing so I think we're just lucky. A came in yesterday with something unusual, however, in the form of a "wind egg"; a much smaller egg that looks the same but is less than half the normal size. You can read all about them here and it is a very interesting read so I'd recommend it highly.

Louise barking at the cow outside the fence

The girls have both spent large amounts of time outside playing during this week, so long as the sun has been out, and they have been really good. They do have a bad habit sometimes of running around barking at nothing, though we do think they are looking for each other when they do this, but other than that they just play or explore or lay in the sun or dig and do so without bothering us. Today there was a lot of barking from the top bank and when we looked we saw that Louise was stood barking at a cow. At first they were literally nose to nose through the fence but had moved by the time I got the camera. Brilliant.

And so there it is; completed and without taking up the whole evening as well. Other than what I've talked about I've spent a lot of time reading my railroad magazine and thinking about the layout I am going to be starting soon. My plans are really coming together and I think will work very well. More on that when I actually start to make it.

Stairway fun

Hi there everyone, it's me back for another fun day update. It's been another warm one interspersed today for variety with a short sharp shower which was very welcome indeed. For now, let's got back to early this morning... very early...

Sun fully up above the horizon

I woke to the alarm at 5am after a pretty solid nights sleep to find that A wasn't there and hadn't had such a good night sadly so she had ended up on the sofa so as to not disturb me. The reason for the early start was that my parents were up and away for their flight home. We've had such a lovely time with them here it was a real shame to see them go and also a shame they had to leave so early so I wasn't very awake at all. I did get to hug them both and then wave them off from the vehicle gate before stumbling back to bed, letting the birds out on the way past. A stayed awake and put some washing on and worked a bit because she is hardcore. It was actually fully dark when they left but when I woke again gasping for a brew the sun was up. I hadn't laid in too much and we were able to enjoy a time on the balcony before it was time for A to head for the men.

Patio doors look really good

As soon as she went out I popped downstairs with the puppies and grabbed the chainsaw and axe and everything to go round and carry on chopping wood. On the way I was struck again by how well the new double doors, which will eventually lead onto the patio, look now they are in so I snapped a picture for all you lovely people to appreciate. It really does look nice I think; I can't wait for the rubble pile to be replaced with the brick built pizza oven.

I took the chainsaw apart

So feeling happy about that particular decision and how it has worked out I went and set myself up to carry on chopping wood. This morning I was going to be using the chainsaw first thing to trim down the large tree which had resisted axe efforts the day before. This was all well and good but I could not get the chainsaw to work. It started fine but the chain wouldn't go around. I took the chain attachment off and had a look but couldn't see anything immediately wrong other than the bit that spins the chain wasn't spinning. After a few minutes of fiddling I decided to leave it and wait for Bekir to return so I headed in and made myself bacon and eggs to cheer myself up. This worked, of course.

Lots of birds hanging about

While I was waiting I saw that the swallows and house martins are still here in their droves but this time they were sat on "Rambo's wires" rather than the ones at the bottom of the land. Of course as none of us were near him he was ignoring them and they were sat their without a crazed dog barking at them. He only bothers them when he thinks we're watching.

Shortly after the men were back and when they were ready for work I asked Bekir to have a look at the chainsaw. Of course he found the problem very quickly and it wasn't broken in the slightest. I had managed to engage a safety feature that I didn't know about by knocking the hand guard forward which locks the machine out. We cleaned it up and put it back together and now it is working fine however I decided to not carry on with chopping and leave it for tomorrow as I really had to get to work by that point.

Sally clearing rubble from the hole

Sally hadn't waited for us to come back in and was inside shifting the rubble from underneath the hole that had been knocked for the spiral staircase. Bekir went in to help and pretty quickly it was all gone and swept tidy. They are super clean as they work and so considerate with it; for example they always put their cigarette butts in the can we provide as we try to stop Thelma and Louise eating them from off the floor.

Resting in-between play times

The puppies have had a blast today being outside more than they have been inside I think. Every now and then I've realised I haven't seen them for a bit and gone out to call them to check they are OK (old fears from Ralf's disappearance die hard) but every time they have reappeared. Once they were a bit slow to reply and Bekir and Sally joined in the search but they appeared by the front door that time. When they have been inside they have variously been around our feet, right under the my desk by the wires or sleeping really hard on their bed. They're such awesome puppies and they give us so many laughs every day.

Scratches for where the steps will go

It was a quiet morning for the men, after they finished clearing the rubble, as they worked out how this spiral staircase is actually going to work. I left them to it for a large part and then went down to get involved in the discussions. We spent a little while working out where we wanted to enter the staircase from the living room and decided that by the wall walking away from the windows was best. A few minutes later it struck me that this was not going to work with how the hole was arranged with the pole in the middle so we went back to the drawing board and with much discussion including A and Bekir and Sally, and using bits of wood as props, we changed it slightly so you enter the stairs from the room edge. We then had to work out how high we wanted each step so with the help of some books and a block of wood we came up with 15cm per step which will give us 20 steps for the full height. Bekir then got on with building a full size model with wood so we can see what it will look like.

A little visitor

In a brief aside from what has been a building progress day today when I was chasing some flies around with the fly spray today I noticed there was a small preying mantis on the fly screen. I was careful to not spray anywhere near it but it is still there as it refuses to let go when I try and get it outside. Hopefully it'll go soon. I love the wildlife here; my mum and I saw a stick insect the day of the bonfire as well which was also awesome but I had no camera with me at the time.

Thinking about how to make the stairs

The thought process with the design of the stairs did not end there and we ended up having a few conversations and printing out another picture from the internet to show how we wanted to get onto the stairs from the top. Bekir was taking this very seriously and obviously wanted to plan it all out before starting with the metal which is just perfect. He and Sally were using bits of wood to make the model for us but when we changed our entry point they had to take it to bits then start it again.

Big black cloud heading our way

I left them to it for a while and went out to get the washing in as the weather was starting to look a bit threatening. It was good that I did as later, when I was called as we had visitors and Rambo needed putting away, it started raining quite heavily for a while with big drops. I was stood out in it with my hands in the air being laughed at by everyone. The visitors were for the telephone company and apparently in a month the box on our property, and the cables running across it, will go. Excellent news.

The square spiral staircase mockup makes prorgess

I left Bekir and Sally to it for a bit but then went to get a photograph of progress and realised something was wrong; Bekir was holding the wrong picture; not the square spiral staircase that we want but the round one we'd printed out to show the entrance step. By mistake I hadn't taken that picture back after we sorted that problem and he had misunderstood and thought we had changed out minds completely. After a little discussion with A, and a quick trip to google translate, I was able to explain what I wanted which caused them to have to take down what they had done and start again, for the third time. I felt pretty bad about this however we want to have it right and I know they are also keen on that; I think this is proving to be a welcome challenge after the boredom of the guest suite as well.

With this solved I really did leave them to it and when it came time to take them home they were happier and had made quite a lot of progress again. The journey was uneventful completely other than Thomas going past 110,000 miles and leaving A with the chance for a palindromic milage tomorrow, and there being a completely flat dog on the road by our junction which is always a sad sight. There are so many wild dogs though more of them get hit by cars or trucks than you realise.

Superb sea food and chorizo pasta

A was cooking away when I got back and started on this and when it was ready (I was on stirring duty while she fed the chickens and Rambo) we sat at the inside table for the first time since before my parents arrived and ate our dinner. It was just too dark and dingy to want to sit on the balcony and anyway I like sitting there looking out the back window.

So it's a nice early end to my typing this update which means I can get an early night to complement the really deep siesta I had today. Thanks for reading.