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.