Tuesday 15-5-2007
Already half way through May and it is now not very likely that we will be in the house by the end of May. There seems to be little consistency with the number of folks on site. Today there is just one young lad cementing the walls below the staircase, they look good but there are still loads of finishing off jobs to be done as well as the entire kitchen to fit. A fleet of ten men would finish the job in two days, one man will take twenty days.
We have bought some bathroom cabinets and mirrors today and they were delivered this afternoon.
Last night was a quiet night so we slept well. The wind has swung around to the south east now so it does not worry us as much as a westerly wind.
We are again off line so at the moment you could say that we are just a little fed up with things today. We’re going out dancing tonight so that and a beer afterwards will perhaps lift the mood.
Wednesday 16-5-2007
We sort of danced last night and then had a welcome pint, or two, afterwards but didn’t play cards.
The night was perfectly still so that you could smell the campo as we got back to the caravan. This is quite unusual, as there is nearly always a light breeze blowing, but very welcome
We went to Albox (so what’s new I hear you say)today to collect some more light fittings this morning.
Another frustrating day, here on site, where ‘we’ had to point out blatant cock up’s to the ‘professional’ builders. Why don’t the professional builders see the problems and correct them to save an awful lot of time space and energy? (correcting the cock up’s). From this you may guess that we are getting impatient to have the job finished and for us to move in as soon as possible. When the builder drops one young lad off in a morning to work up here by himself all day, it does not to us seem a very determined effort on the part of the builder to conclude the job ‘rapido’. When Carlos (employed by Dario) works here on Wednesday and Thursday last week and then we don’t see him again and the entire kitchen has yet to be done, and the remaining electrics, and the plumbing, and the wardrobe doors, and the central heating, and the air conditioning, and the kitchen units need his presence, we don’t comprehend why.
We are told not to get excited about this way of working, but I am not going to let poor quality work go with out expressing our feelings about it, so that whatever anyone may think of us we have done all we can to keep our foot on the accelerator. We know also that it is not just a Spanish thing, all builders are getting away with it and they shouldn’t. Some tiles laid today were clearly a different shade to the ones that they were laid next to.
Needless to say we have had a meeting at three o’clock today to vent our spleens with Dario, Pam and Bob.
After a lot of debate we expressed our numerous points and grumps about the slowness of work. Dario, Elayne and myself have just now been to the tile shop where we created a riot of disbelief about the tile shade variation. Eventually an older man took control and took us round the back to show us some more of the same tiles. Immediately we could see the difference and so we came away happy, except that all the wrong ones have to be removed and replaced with the correct ones which takes even more time.
As we speak, so to speak, as I write this a JCB has arrived on site to level the drive way in readiness for re-enforcing and to dig the garage foundations. We are told that on Friday the concrete lorries will arrive to lay all of that.
Two steps forward and one backward.
Thursday 17-5-2007
We danced our socks off last night at Lentisco’s. It was about half past twelve when we arrived back at the caravan on a delightful starry and yet another calm night. The last time we danced to this particular DJ he exhibited the character of a lump of dough. It was quite sobering despite a few pints. Consequently we were not looking forward to last night too much, apart from being with our friends. In the mean time the DJ has polished his communication skills with the audience and he’s now quite chatty. His music, he plays the keyboard and the guitar, was always good, but his selection of music last night hit all the right spots for a lot of that particular audience including us. A round of drinks comes to about €12 (€6 each) and then supper is included so it’s a very reasonable nights entertainment.
On the house front ‘we’ (not the builders or the tile suppliers, but ’we’) discovered today why the tiles yesterday appeared to be off shade. The tiles already laid had been in place for over a week. Cementing the same tile next to the week old ones produce a grey effect on the new ones. We concluded that the agua (water) in the tile cement soaks into the back of the tile and under the glaze giving this grey colour. All this discovery after removing all of yesterdays tiles and replacing them. We hope and strongly suspect that when the new tiles dry out they will be the same colour as the already dried ones. Now why didn’t someone point that out to us?
The guy with the JCB has done a really good job on levelling the drive and digging out the garage foundations today, see pictures, if I ever get back on line. The front door, ‘principal entrado’ you may remember, now has three coats of varnish on it and is looking superb. Still no Carlos since last Thursday, probably be ‘all hell and no notion’ next week now.
BTW it’s another warm sunny day and you can probably tell that the mood has lifted considerably from yesterday.
Friday 18-5-2007
Having cleared the front of the house area the two builders are finishing jobs off and the place is starting to look more realistic now. The second of the lounge door rejas has been put on this morning and some of the final yeso’ing is being done. Still no sign of Carlos although we have called his secretary to find out when he is coming to site. We presume that the concrete lorries will arrive either tomorrow or Monday to lay the drive and the garage foundations.
We went down to HO this morning early and returned about half past eleven. The ambient temperature was twenty five degrees and inside the caravan it was thirty four, poor cats need to get over to the cool house as soon as we can get them there.
We are still off line and I am getting really p……d off about it. I call Iberbanda who say they will get a technician to call us but they don’t. Apart from a few hours on Monday we have been off line for over a week now. The problem of course is that, as we do not have a phone land line and as the signal comes via radio waves, there is no competition to challenge and sharpen Iberbanda’s performance.
Saturday 19-5-2007
Quite a busy day today. We started down in Albox quite early this morning buying front door furniture, only to discover when we got back to camp that the piece we had fallen in love with and ordered was very much too large to fit in the middle area of the front door. We picked up some diesel B for the genny, it’s running well since it set it’s self on fire last week. Then we treated ourselves, we do a lot of this lately, we hope the kids are watching their diminishing inheritance very closely, to a pair of very sexy mountain bikes. Elayne said that it’s about twenty five years since she rode a bike and it must be something similar for me. We have been out on them this evening and it’s wonderful to streak down hills at an alarming rate of knots. There are loads of tracks around here to ride on so it will keep us both fit and interested. I just know that we will have both found some long forgotten muscles by morning.
For all intents and purposes the builders have finished building the house. There will be snag bits still to do but in the main they are done. We had a brief visit by two plumbers today. They have laid out the central heating radiators, the bath and the toilets. However they disappeared at two o’clock and might arrive back on Monday. We also believe that the concrete lorries will deliver the drive on Monday and the builders can then get on building the utility room for us. Once this is finished we can get the central heating oil tank installed and the solar heating system up and running. The house looks delightful, from our point of view, and with the final rejas in place it has at last got it’s own character.
Domingo 20-5-2007
We have been here in Spain for ten months as of today. We have learned an enormous amount in that time and we are only just beginning really. We have been over to the house several times today, checking on things. We have started a snags list so that we have loads of time to hunt out any problems before they hand over to us.
This morning I attended to some interim pruning of the almond trees. I hard pruned a block of them last year and they have nearly all thrown out loads of side shoots which I have set to and take off. Everything to do with the almonds is tough. They bite and scratch for no apparent reason and one always comes away knackered, hot and bloody no matter what the operation being carried out.
It is a bit stormy this afternoon. We thought that we may have a thunderstorm but it all seems to be blowing over. The, all but, finished house looks terrific against the black stormy sky background .
The water coming down from the hebe is in a black plastic pipe that lays on the land. The sun takes the water temperature right up until we have enough hot water for two very long showers. The problem is if it gets too hot we then have no cold water to cool it down with. That’s life here in Spain.
Monday 21-5-2005
We noted that the spring flowers are shrivelling up and being replaced by the summer flowers. The bougainvillea is out, the oleander is flowering down the central reservation of the motorway and looks good. The huge stalks of the aloe vera are shooting up by the hour and the flower heads are starting to show, they grow to about fifteen to twenty foot and once they have flowered/seeded that part of the plant dies back and just leaves an ugly stalk. We were once told that it was illegal to cut the stalks down but we don’t think that this can be true.
The builders are preparing the drive for the concrete lorries coming tomorrow. We have a kitchen reja door but have now noticed that the makers have forgotten to put a handle on it, most odd. We believe that the plumbers are coming back tomorrow to finish what they started on Saturday morning i.e. the central heating and the two bathrooms. We’ll believe it when we see them. The builders have buried tubes across the drive from the house to the garage for the oil fired central heating pipes and the electricity from the house to the garage. They are also putting a drainage pipe under the drive to carry rain water from the upper land down past the house to the land below the house (don’t want the damned thing floating away after all this effort, do we?).
If the southerly wind dies a little this evening we will go for a short ride on our bikes.
PS to all of this: I am putting the pictures on but if you want to see anything particular please let me know and I will oblige if I can.
Already half way through May and it is now not very likely that we will be in the house by the end of May. There seems to be little consistency with the number of folks on site. Today there is just one young lad cementing the walls below the staircase, they look good but there are still loads of finishing off jobs to be done as well as the entire kitchen to fit. A fleet of ten men would finish the job in two days, one man will take twenty days.
We have bought some bathroom cabinets and mirrors today and they were delivered this afternoon.
Last night was a quiet night so we slept well. The wind has swung around to the south east now so it does not worry us as much as a westerly wind.
We are again off line so at the moment you could say that we are just a little fed up with things today. We’re going out dancing tonight so that and a beer afterwards will perhaps lift the mood.
Wednesday 16-5-2007
We sort of danced last night and then had a welcome pint, or two, afterwards but didn’t play cards.
The night was perfectly still so that you could smell the campo as we got back to the caravan. This is quite unusual, as there is nearly always a light breeze blowing, but very welcome
We went to Albox (so what’s new I hear you say)today to collect some more light fittings this morning.
Another frustrating day, here on site, where ‘we’ had to point out blatant cock up’s to the ‘professional’ builders. Why don’t the professional builders see the problems and correct them to save an awful lot of time space and energy? (correcting the cock up’s). From this you may guess that we are getting impatient to have the job finished and for us to move in as soon as possible. When the builder drops one young lad off in a morning to work up here by himself all day, it does not to us seem a very determined effort on the part of the builder to conclude the job ‘rapido’. When Carlos (employed by Dario) works here on Wednesday and Thursday last week and then we don’t see him again and the entire kitchen has yet to be done, and the remaining electrics, and the plumbing, and the wardrobe doors, and the central heating, and the air conditioning, and the kitchen units need his presence, we don’t comprehend why.
We are told not to get excited about this way of working, but I am not going to let poor quality work go with out expressing our feelings about it, so that whatever anyone may think of us we have done all we can to keep our foot on the accelerator. We know also that it is not just a Spanish thing, all builders are getting away with it and they shouldn’t. Some tiles laid today were clearly a different shade to the ones that they were laid next to.
Needless to say we have had a meeting at three o’clock today to vent our spleens with Dario, Pam and Bob.
After a lot of debate we expressed our numerous points and grumps about the slowness of work. Dario, Elayne and myself have just now been to the tile shop where we created a riot of disbelief about the tile shade variation. Eventually an older man took control and took us round the back to show us some more of the same tiles. Immediately we could see the difference and so we came away happy, except that all the wrong ones have to be removed and replaced with the correct ones which takes even more time.
As we speak, so to speak, as I write this a JCB has arrived on site to level the drive way in readiness for re-enforcing and to dig the garage foundations. We are told that on Friday the concrete lorries will arrive to lay all of that.
Two steps forward and one backward.
Thursday 17-5-2007
We danced our socks off last night at Lentisco’s. It was about half past twelve when we arrived back at the caravan on a delightful starry and yet another calm night. The last time we danced to this particular DJ he exhibited the character of a lump of dough. It was quite sobering despite a few pints. Consequently we were not looking forward to last night too much, apart from being with our friends. In the mean time the DJ has polished his communication skills with the audience and he’s now quite chatty. His music, he plays the keyboard and the guitar, was always good, but his selection of music last night hit all the right spots for a lot of that particular audience including us. A round of drinks comes to about €12 (€6 each) and then supper is included so it’s a very reasonable nights entertainment.
On the house front ‘we’ (not the builders or the tile suppliers, but ’we’) discovered today why the tiles yesterday appeared to be off shade. The tiles already laid had been in place for over a week. Cementing the same tile next to the week old ones produce a grey effect on the new ones. We concluded that the agua (water) in the tile cement soaks into the back of the tile and under the glaze giving this grey colour. All this discovery after removing all of yesterdays tiles and replacing them. We hope and strongly suspect that when the new tiles dry out they will be the same colour as the already dried ones. Now why didn’t someone point that out to us?
The guy with the JCB has done a really good job on levelling the drive and digging out the garage foundations today, see pictures, if I ever get back on line. The front door, ‘principal entrado’ you may remember, now has three coats of varnish on it and is looking superb. Still no Carlos since last Thursday, probably be ‘all hell and no notion’ next week now.
BTW it’s another warm sunny day and you can probably tell that the mood has lifted considerably from yesterday.
Friday 18-5-2007
Having cleared the front of the house area the two builders are finishing jobs off and the place is starting to look more realistic now. The second of the lounge door rejas has been put on this morning and some of the final yeso’ing is being done. Still no sign of Carlos although we have called his secretary to find out when he is coming to site. We presume that the concrete lorries will arrive either tomorrow or Monday to lay the drive and the garage foundations.
We went down to HO this morning early and returned about half past eleven. The ambient temperature was twenty five degrees and inside the caravan it was thirty four, poor cats need to get over to the cool house as soon as we can get them there.
We are still off line and I am getting really p……d off about it. I call Iberbanda who say they will get a technician to call us but they don’t. Apart from a few hours on Monday we have been off line for over a week now. The problem of course is that, as we do not have a phone land line and as the signal comes via radio waves, there is no competition to challenge and sharpen Iberbanda’s performance.
Saturday 19-5-2007
Quite a busy day today. We started down in Albox quite early this morning buying front door furniture, only to discover when we got back to camp that the piece we had fallen in love with and ordered was very much too large to fit in the middle area of the front door. We picked up some diesel B for the genny, it’s running well since it set it’s self on fire last week. Then we treated ourselves, we do a lot of this lately, we hope the kids are watching their diminishing inheritance very closely, to a pair of very sexy mountain bikes. Elayne said that it’s about twenty five years since she rode a bike and it must be something similar for me. We have been out on them this evening and it’s wonderful to streak down hills at an alarming rate of knots. There are loads of tracks around here to ride on so it will keep us both fit and interested. I just know that we will have both found some long forgotten muscles by morning.
For all intents and purposes the builders have finished building the house. There will be snag bits still to do but in the main they are done. We had a brief visit by two plumbers today. They have laid out the central heating radiators, the bath and the toilets. However they disappeared at two o’clock and might arrive back on Monday. We also believe that the concrete lorries will deliver the drive on Monday and the builders can then get on building the utility room for us. Once this is finished we can get the central heating oil tank installed and the solar heating system up and running. The house looks delightful, from our point of view, and with the final rejas in place it has at last got it’s own character.
Domingo 20-5-2007
We have been here in Spain for ten months as of today. We have learned an enormous amount in that time and we are only just beginning really. We have been over to the house several times today, checking on things. We have started a snags list so that we have loads of time to hunt out any problems before they hand over to us.
This morning I attended to some interim pruning of the almond trees. I hard pruned a block of them last year and they have nearly all thrown out loads of side shoots which I have set to and take off. Everything to do with the almonds is tough. They bite and scratch for no apparent reason and one always comes away knackered, hot and bloody no matter what the operation being carried out.
It is a bit stormy this afternoon. We thought that we may have a thunderstorm but it all seems to be blowing over. The, all but, finished house looks terrific against the black stormy sky background .
The water coming down from the hebe is in a black plastic pipe that lays on the land. The sun takes the water temperature right up until we have enough hot water for two very long showers. The problem is if it gets too hot we then have no cold water to cool it down with. That’s life here in Spain.
Monday 21-5-2005
We noted that the spring flowers are shrivelling up and being replaced by the summer flowers. The bougainvillea is out, the oleander is flowering down the central reservation of the motorway and looks good. The huge stalks of the aloe vera are shooting up by the hour and the flower heads are starting to show, they grow to about fifteen to twenty foot and once they have flowered/seeded that part of the plant dies back and just leaves an ugly stalk. We were once told that it was illegal to cut the stalks down but we don’t think that this can be true.
The builders are preparing the drive for the concrete lorries coming tomorrow. We have a kitchen reja door but have now noticed that the makers have forgotten to put a handle on it, most odd. We believe that the plumbers are coming back tomorrow to finish what they started on Saturday morning i.e. the central heating and the two bathrooms. We’ll believe it when we see them. The builders have buried tubes across the drive from the house to the garage for the oil fired central heating pipes and the electricity from the house to the garage. They are also putting a drainage pipe under the drive to carry rain water from the upper land down past the house to the land below the house (don’t want the damned thing floating away after all this effort, do we?).
If the southerly wind dies a little this evening we will go for a short ride on our bikes.
PS to all of this: I am putting the pictures on but if you want to see anything particular please let me know and I will oblige if I can.
1 comment:
You'll be needing some helmets or the camino/head interface may sting a little !
How come you were never interested in riding with us then?
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