Making a beam

After the excitement of yesterday today it was back to the main task under the stairs. Last night Halil dropped Thomas back as his car was fixed which was good.

Bekir on the final section of wall

Starting to burn a load of rubbish

Hammer drill in action

Metal for making a reinforcement frame

Bekir sweeps up

Waterproofing a plank

Rebar frame in place

Now the cement goes in

First thing Bekir went into the cupboard under the stairs as there was some more wall still not done, which I didn't know about. It didn't take long for him to do this little section, however. They were in tidy up mode today and so started burning some rubbish which we also added some to. That fire has been going all day. Later on there was a lot of noise as Halil drilled out ready for installing metal frame and pouring concrete for a beam. Bekir was outside bending rebar to turn into the reinforcement for the beam and then Bekir swept up while Halil wrapped plastic around a plank to act as the bottom for the form. It took them a while to assemble and secure everything but eventually they were pouring the concrete into the form and it will now sit there all weekend curing. The window people rang about installing the door and I think they'll be coming on Monday which is exciting.

The fire keeps burning into the evening

Cooking on the wood stove

The fire was still going all day, and it's still glowing right now. They got rid of lots of rubbish! This evening I got to cook Daddy Pasta on the wood stove which was awesome to do and the first time for a while.

So there it is. We have promise of snow this weekend but you'll have to wait until Monday to find out. Thanks for reading and back Monday.

Weekend and back to it

Well it's Monday and my good intentions to write up about the weekend last night went the way of forgetfulness. Oh well. Let's get to it.

Rosie caught two bubbles after blowing them!

Heading out for a walk

Hazy view across the valley

Thelma proudly bringing her stick back

Out for our dinner in the late summer warmth

Rosie climbing like a monkey

Saturday was a great day. Rosie was in great form and we had lots of fun, blowing bubbles then taking the puppies for a lovely walk over to the headland. It was a nice morning, but pretty hazy across the valley. The girls all had fun, Rosie collected sticks and stones and pine cones and we walked back after a lovely time. That evening we went out for our dinner at the restaurant with the awesome play area and Rosie had a great time on the swings and climbing and our food was pretty lovely also. As I said, a lovely day all round.

Emptying out the pool shed

Rosie sifting flour as she bakes

Mud wasp nest

It is still occupied

All smiles as we play our game

Sunday was also a beautiful day. I took advantage to finally get the pool shed emptied (which did involve emptying the sand out of the filter which was quite a messy task) and clearing everything out so we could move it to the side of the patio. Inside Angela and Rosie were baking some buns which turned out amazing. I found a mud wasp nest inside the shed while I was moving it and had to remove the nest sadly; hopefully it'll be ok where I relocated it to. We also had a really fun role playing session in The One Ring. In the evening we took our chairs out onto the outside balcony and sat looking for shooting stars however we didn't see any. We did see lots of satellites however.

Clouds with the sun breaking through

Securing the new downpipe

Smoothing the face of the steps

Making the slope smooth as well

Setting out the remaining steps

And so to today. It was a cloudy and miserable start to the day however after I dropped Rosie to school and headed into town for a few bits the clouds broke up and the sun came out and it was lovely for the rest of the day. The first thing the men did was to sort out the down pipe on the balcony. This had blown off and every time we have rain it floods the balcony, which then leaks everywhere. Now we have a really secure downpipe diverting the water onto the car port roof and away. Success! With this done the men went back to working on the stairs and they cracked on really well today. They completed the fronts of all the stairs they had already done the tops, smoothed out the angled section (which will later be tiled) and then set out and finished up all the remaining stairs. This is awesome.

So there it is; thanks for reading and back tomorrow.

More badly timed rain

 Back to it and we have a weekend and today to cover. Let's get cracking.

Sliding at the park

Jumping at the park

Rosie with the cakes she made

Steak for Sunday dinner

The beautiful view from our table

Saturday was a sunny day and after a brief trip into town to look at a second hand shop (only clothes and shoes, no desks) I took Rosie to the park to play for an hour or so before it was time for our call with my Mum and sister. Angela had a lovely morning in the art room. Thankfully Rosie was a very good girl as I woke feeling quite battered still from the vaccine. Sunday I felt a little better and got a bit done on Rosie's model railway while Angela baked cakes with Rosie. We had a lovely steak sunday dinner sat on the balcony and I again reflected just how lucky we are here. It's glorious.

Foggy start to the day

Stones shifted

Cutting to size

Patio progress

And so to today. It was a foggy start but that burned off quickly. The men were in on time but announced they needed nails, which was a little surprising as they had been to the shop Friday and Thursday last week. We had enough laying around that they didn't get totally stopped and first of all they were clearning stones again anyway. After that it was the task for the rest of the day; making the wooden shuttering that will contain the cement, and give a lip over the edge of the walls. This was almost completed today however we lost time with the extra shop trip, and then during their coffee break in the afternoon it started raining hard and didn't let up. A little frustrating but that's life.

And so there you have it; hopefully more will get done tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Plasterboard and plastering

 Another week done and it is Friday again. Once again we had no Sally, but he will be back on Monday apparently. I hope everything is OK over there.

The first sheet of plasterboard in place

Bekir fits the second level

The last few pieces go up

A lovely looking wall

Halil plasters the stairs

Covering the joints

Today Bekir and Halil worked all day to fit the plasterboard onto the wall outside Room 13. This is a quick process, though there was some requirement for cutting and fitting, and the job is completed now. It looks great, though once it was done and Halil started on the plastering of the stairs, Bekir went and tried to use plaster with no joint strip on the joins; I will be having a word about this on Monday. I want it to be smooth. Anyway, it does look great and once it has been joint stripped it can be plastered, then painted, the electric fittings and it is done. We also received more of the carpet tools today so that will be possible to do once they have finished all the dusty dirty work.

Spicy Pork Pasta on the stove

Steve and Rosie looking for Gnasher

I had another busy day but did manage to get to collect Rosie; Angela had a really busy day tidying up as we were expecting a guest. When I finally got away from my desk I welcomed Steve and began to cook my Spicy Pork Pasta, but this time I was able to cook on the petchka which was brilliant. Rosie was such a star, and the food went down well for everyone, and now she's in bed and Angela is chilling and I'm about to spend hobby time with Steve.

Thanks for reading, see you Monday.

Yucky week

This week has been pretty rubbish, all in all. The sun hasn't shone once all week, that I can remember, and the last three days it has pretty much rained non-stop. We've even had to light the fire a few times! It's nearly JUNE!! Anyway, Monday morning now and I'm getting a quick start on this before legging it to the Bulgarian lesson and finally the sun is shining. I've just had my brew sat on the patio with Rambo lying at my feet and listening to the multitude of birds singing their cacophonous songs and that has made things a lot better.

Good bye sun, see you in a week

The broken table

Glued and screwed

A planting out the melons

Lots of corn growing well now

Purple flowers on our spuds, and A was VERY excited

Caterpillars on one of our trees

Smiling cook making lovely cake

Home grown, very tasty, strawberry

Playing our game on the new gaming table

Very hungry chicks eating their dinner

Our dinner was really lovely also

Last Sunday night we said goodbye to the sun and it gave us quite a show as it went down but the next morning the clouds were firmly in place and weren't for moving. Our Bulgarian lesson was cancelled last week due to exams the teacher had to be involved in elsewhere so we tried to be productive and actually didn't do too badly. I fixed up the patio table which ended up requiring completely new screw-points drilling but now I think it's pretty secure which is good. A was out in the garden planting the melons into a bed and I went round taking pictures of spud flowers and then headed off to water the orchard. While I was over there I saw that one of our border trees was absolutely festooned with caterpillars in nests and while I'm not sure if they ARE the nasty processionaries I still broke our usual rule and sprayed as many as I could reach with RAID. A was in the kitchen for most of the day baking some lovely cakes, one of which she gave to the neighbours as a gift while the other we have eaten during the week, and she had harvested the two ripe strawberries from the garden as well. They were so tasty! We will certainly be increasing our strawberry growing over the next few years. In the afternoon we finished off the game we had started the day before which was really good fun. The chicks are hungry even though we feed them three times a day and, after having a relatively productive day, so were we; A had made a lovely pie for our dinner, not something we eat often, and I think we'll be having more as it was very tasty.

The brothers checking over Thomas

Another olive tree put into a pot

Cutting the grass with a sickle

Before and after around the raised beds

Only a small quantity of claret for my efforts

Sassy now has steps

Lots of peas

A courgette flower

Tuesday morning saw me out early to take Thomas to the garage for a check up following his minor breakdown last week. Lyubo and his brother took him for a drive around their yard, bumped up and down curbs and did everything they could to test the strength of the clutch and after about twenty minutes pronounced him fine. When I got back I found that A had dug up the second of the olive trees which has miraculously started to sprout and now she has trimmed the dead bits off and it's doing really well. I wasn't to escape the gardening push and set to with the sickle to trim down the overgrowth around the spud towers. It didn't take long and I just kept going after that and by lunch time had cut the grass all around the raised beds as well. Of course I managed to cut myself while doing this, but not too badly. Keeping my momentum going I set to and made a couple of little steps to allow Sassy to jump in and out of her run. A thought they weren't sufficient, however, and she was right so it took until later in the week for that task to actually be completed. Finally here are a couple of pictures of the success in our garden this year; peas and courgettes in the spud towers.

All done by hand with a sickle

A desert scene for a display board

Ready to eat our dinner outside

I did some more grass cutting on Wednesday through the morning and finished off after lunch so I cleared the grass up to the fence and down to the edge of the lawn. This was my target for the day and I was hoping to get started on the actual lawn the day after. With my chores done I spent a bit of time on modelling and finished off the desert display board that I had been working on for a few days. It has really come out well considering I've not done this style of scenery before. The weather, while very overcast, was warm and so we were able to eat our dinner outside which is something we always aim for - it's so much better to be outside than in. That was the last time for the week, however.

Panoramic from the balcony showing the storms

Such black clouds over the west

Sticking down the road for my next display board

A lovely yogurt based salad

Thursday was a write-off, other than getting some more modelling done, and I spent a fair chunk of it hiding in bed. There was thunder and a hugely threatening storm which went right passed us and didn't go over us however it did rain and it was windy and by the time it came to dinner time we were in the mood for going out so went to our favourite restaurant. Lunch had been a huge quantity of curry heated up from the freezer so we were full and only had a little salad and nibbles.

Not a morning for loading a trailer, I don't think

The snake from their land

Cannot believe we had to light the fire

Originally we'd planned to go back to the other school on Friday with the trailer to get the final bits but the unsettled weather made us put that plan off and instead we headed over to our friends' place, with the puppies, for a brew and a chat. The weather held off for us while we were visiting them, and it was lovely to sit on their porch drinking tea and chatting, and then we headed into town for lunch with them. The biggest excitement for me of the visit was finding a snake on their driveway; Nick removed it with a forked stick like a pro. Lunch was very lovely, at a new place opened in our local town that we hadn't tried yet. The threatened storm hit while we were eating and there were some huge bangs and crashes, and it rained hard, but we were dry under cover. When we got home from that it was so cold and damp that I lit the fire in the Living Room and we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sat in there, reading and relaxing and enjoying the comfort of the flames.

The sum total of my weekend success

Thelma wants to play tug, see below for fun video

A lovely dram

The weekend was another write off, though not for A who got loads of cleaning and tidying done. I did put up the final shelf in the vestibule for storing bedding, which was a good success, and yesterday I wired in the new spur which will power the Men's Room (which will be my workshop) and the gym, but I can't recall doing anything else of value at all. I did some modelling but even that was not engrossing me very much. It was a tough weekend and the weather really did not help at all. Thelma was her usual self with her toy, though, and insisted on being played with yesterday. In the evening, in honour of the whisky festival which is going on now, I had a small dram of Bruichladdich which was very nice. Today is Caol Ila day so that will be being supped after dinner.

Beautiful poppies out in force

Tomatoes no longer overwhelmed by weeds

"That is an aubergine, I think"

Cutting grass the old fashioned slow way

A huge ice radish

This morning we woke to sunshine for the first time in what felt like ages. I was up before A as she had a really sore head and I drank my brew sat out on the patio enjoying the warmth and being able to actually be outside. Unfortunately A's head didn't get better so I had to go to the Bulgarian lesson on my own. When I got back, after much shopping after the lesson, I found that A had weeded out the tomato bed and was nearly done weeding the front bed with the melons and aubergines in it. I picked up my sickle and went to work on the lawn however after filling the barrow once I decided to give up on that and I went inside and slept; it was quite tiring at the lesson on my own. A has once again had a really productive day and our harvest has begun with the radish coming good; now we have to work out what to DO with all of them. She's cooked our Sunday roast for today instead of yesterday and it will shortly be served so I'm going to wrap this up here and get down to it.

I have just finished eating a very nice roast so now it's time to publish this so you all can read it.