A busy three days

This update comes at you slightly later than expected; I was planning on doing it last night but as you'll see it just wasn't possible in the end. I've got a lot to get through though hopefully it'll still stay relatively short as I liked the last update being so brief. Here goes.

Bekir fitting the curtain rail in Room 13

Cleaning up the expanding foam

A mud pit on our road

Moving the pile of gravel into the road

Nearly finished the brickwork here

Access for the water into the reservoir

Yulhan breaking up the platform

More breaking going on

Monday morning and it was up and out to get the men early. It was a cold start, about 4 degrees when I got in the car, and I was glad to be back inside. There was lots going on as Bekir got back into Room 13 and put up the curtain rails while Yulhan worked towards finishing the guest room doorway. Outside Ennis had a small additional task to put sand and gravel down on the mudbath that is our track and he went back a few times to keep putting more on; I think we may need another go even know but it is a whole lot better than you see in those pictures. Sally, for his part, was finishing the brick work on the final reservoir housing by the balcony. It was way too cold for me outside but he seemed happy enough; I think they prefer working in this than baking heat. I'd given Yulhan a second task to accompany the door work and so he got into the twin guest room with the breaker and, on and off through the day, the entire building shook and echoed with the sound of him removing the platform.

Paint brushes as reeds for my model

An awesome BLT for lunch

A delivery for the roofing

Such a horrible day, weather-wise

Internet engineer

For my part I went out with Bekir to the shops to order materials for the roofs over the reservoir and then spent time modelling on my rivers; I used old paint brushes and cut them up to make reeds and it was really effective. Lunch was super nice on Monday as I used up the bacon, picked some fresh lettuce from the garden, and had Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato and Cucumber butties. Just after lunch the truck arrived carrying the materials we had ordered so that got unloaded by the men while I hid inside; it really was miserable. While we had been out Bekir and I had dropped into the internet shop to have a word and show a print out of the speed test I'd done. When he had phoned them in the morning to complain about how bad it was working they suggested a power cycle would fix it but it didn't. Then in the shop the lady tried to suggest that having a download speed of 0 mbps was perfectly normal and to be expected. I wasn't going to let her get away with that and neither was Bekir and eventually she agreed to send some mechanics out. I had a lovely coffee in town with Lyubo who it was brilliant to catch up with and then just as I got back the same engineers arrived to look at the internet. They were here for a while and certainly didn't agree that it was behaving as expected and when they left said they would have to do something down in their office. As I type the internet is back up to speed but still experiencing some packet loss however I didn't test that before and so don't know if that IS to be expected.

Bekir fiiting the shelf brackets

First lot on the wall, nearly

A new door in the guest room

Nearly removed all the platform

The roof goes on

Trimming to shape with a chainsaw

Lovely dinner for three (me and two puppies)

The rest of the day was pretty productive too. Bekir was in Room 13 still and had got onto putting up the shelving brackets. There are a lot of these to go up. Yulhan had both completed the work on the doorway and almost finished breaking up the platform in the twin room and Sally had made a good start on roofing the first of the housings. For my dinner I cooked up some pork chops and made semi-hard boiled duck eggs that were slightly underdone. They were still tasty and the puppies were super happy with their half of the meat. I was tired and spent some time lazing on the lazy boy before bed but then had quite a bad night, waking up at 3am and staying awake for about an hour or so before dropping back off. The alarm was not welcomed on Tuesday morning.

Louise staying warm with me

Cold when I got in the car

Low lying cloud with rain

Chipping out the old door

A big pile of rubble

Removing all the rubbble

Shelves supports all on the wall

More next to the desk

Sally working on the roof

It was a cold and miserable start to Tuesday, not helped by that disturbed sleep, and the girls were very unimpressed. I lit the fire for them before leaving which they liked. It was another busy morning and I felt like I rushed around a lot though I didn't achieve much really. I had remembered that we also needed to change the door into the lounge so I cleared out in there ready for Yulhan to swap onto that. This being done caused a lot of mess but they are good at cleaning after themselves. It was so noisy sat downstairs which is maybe why I didn't achieve so much as I wanted. Bekir was making really good progress in Room 13 getting all the shelving up and he was in good humour even when I asked him to change the curtain rails so they were slightly shorter. I cut the rails down and then he mounted them and also put the new cord in so the pulley is in reach. Outside Sally was roofing and Ennis was filling Thomas up for another emptying trip up the hill.

Roof has been tiled

So many shelves

No more platform in here

You shall not pass

It was while we were on our way back after emptying Thomas that Orhan came out onto the lane and stopped us and asked us to bring Thomas into their courtyard. I'm not going to go into much detail but it was a very sad time as one of their cows was calving and the calf could not come out. I helped, and we got everyone over to help, but no matter how much we pulled it was stuck. Eventually the vet said "no, nothing we can do" and the abattoir was called to come and collect her. I then helped them load the poor cow onto the truck that was taking it away. For this reason there are not many more pictures of the rest of yesterday as I was quite affected by it all. SandS came over to collect some eggs, as I'm being overrun, and they arrived right in the middle of all this activity so it was an abbreviated visit and not as pleasant as I was expecting. I had to go out for some chores (paying lots of bills) and then it was time to take the men. Progress had been good. The one roof is almost entirely on, all but one of the shelf supports was up in Room 13, the platform has gone in the twin room and the new door was in place (and out of bounds as you can see) ready for plastering the next day.

Chicken tonight, and Louise's favourite

When I got back from taking the men the Little Lady called me over asking for help and I apparently completely misunderstood her. I had my dinner (I'd already started the chicken off when I left and I made some chips and butter mushrooms as well - again the puppies loved their chicken) which I ate and then went to help. Into Thomas piled Usmivka and the Little Lady carrying dinner supplies and we went down to The Other Brother's house in town where I found him laid up on the sofa; to top their bad day off he had injured himself somehow at the abattoir and was limping really badly. They fed me, so I got a second dinner, and we talked a bit which is good; slowly I'm learning more to communicate however I'm so far off where I want to be. I then gave Usmivka and The Little Lady a lift home and came in myself, pretty exhausted and off to bed after a brew and talking to A.

Ennis clearing this mess

Burn baby burn

Hammering in wooden plugs

Cement around the doors

A clear corridor once more

Louise has lost her playground

Ennis chopping up wood

Another roof takes shape

I slept so well last night, I wasn't disturbed at all, and woke to the alarm still wanting more sleep. It was really miserable this morning and I made the decision that we are not doing any more trips up with coal dust until the ground is a bit drier up there so I asked Ennis to go into the Green Building to clear out the final bits of rubbish and then finish off breaking the branches in there down into kindling. He made a good start, and I went around the house and land a bit to gather more burnable rubbish, and then a fire was set in the rubble pile and it was all thrown on. Inside Bekir was putting the last shelf support in then swept, hoovered, covered over the electrics and put the wooden surround on the door and generally tidied up and finished off before starting on the final item; the big fitted desk. I'm so excited about that! Yulhan was on with the lounge door and also clearing the final rubble from the twin room while Sally moved onto the next reservoir house and began the roof there.

Buds on the plum tree by the Green Building

The chase is on

Rough and tumble play

Dancing as they fight

It is now lunch time and I'm going to pause here and put the last couple of paragraphs in tonight before publishing. The sun has come out, the birds are singing and the kitchen door is propped open letting fresh air in. The plum tree is even showing signs of life so hopefully we'll get a good harvest this year. The puppies are also loving the spring and were just on the top bank on their own and I managed to capture them playing with each other; a sight to make you smile all the time.

I'm just sat down in the evening having gone out for a meal to our favourite restaurant which was really nice, but not as good as when A is with me. A lot has happened around the place this afternoon so let's get this done and posted.

Yulhan uses a chair while plastering in the lounge

Footprints in the dust

Touching up the changed areas

Bekir makes a careful cut

Just getting ready to trim it lengthwise

The extent of my work bench for modelling and other things

Bekir was just doing the finishing touches and tidying up in Room 13 after lunch and Yulhan was in the lounge putting some plaster around the door to finish that task for now. You can see just how much cleaning is needed now after that job; at least it is completed. With Room 13 ready, and Yulhan now needing the scaffold for his next job, Bekir called him in to do the final bits of painting where he'd had to move things following my changes of mind. Then, finally, it was the very exciting moment I was waiting for; the work bench in Room 13. I spent some time with Bekir working out the final dimensions and we have settled on 82cm deep, which matched up to the edge of one of the pieces of wood that makes up the board. Once this was decided on it was down into the workshop and I helped lift these really heavy boards onto the saw horses and the assisted while he cut them to size. We ended up trimming one down by about 15cm in length to give a little more space between this workbench and the desk drawers but otherwise it was perfect.

Progress on the twin room continues

Mid afternoon out at the reservoir house

A little later on, more progress

Welding the desk supports

We had lifted the scaffold out into the twin room so that Yulhan could get back to his task in there which was stripping the walls. It is such a dusty job that I persuaded him to take a dust mask but when I went back later it was just hung on the edge of the scaffold and he wasn't using it. Typical. Outside, and not forgotten about at all, Sally was making very good progress on the roof. I think tomorrow he'll begin tiling this. After some more thought, and discussions about plans, Bekir worked out that we were slightly short on metal so we quickly dropped down into town to pick some up. Mostly happily, while we were stopped getting some drill bits in town, The Other Brother drove past and stopped to say hello and said he was feeling much better. Who knew an onion compress would work such wonders. The rest of the afternoon I was pottering around being very excited about the workbench and Bekir was doing the metal work for the support structure. It's still a little way off but I am hopeful that the whole lot, including sink, will be in by the end of tomorrow.

Little pea plants coming on

Russian Salad to start

Main course of Sesame Chicken and Cheesy Chips

In the Green Building Ennis had made some great progress but I didn't get in to take a picture. I am almost expecting him to not come tomorrow as I still won't want to dig out the coal and I get the feeling he isn't really enjoying chopping the wood. Either way is fine by me. I did get a picture of some of the pea plants that are coming up which is very exciting as we've not managed peas before. Still no spuds showing though - sorry, love. Hopefully they thrive and we can have fresh garden peas later in the year. After taking the men home I went straight to our favourite restaurant for my dinner (as I've said) and it was nice to get out and see some different walls.

Right that wasn't very short in the end. Sorry. Thanks for reading.