The 2nd Floor is up!

Finally the 2nd floor is up. The builders had to get two more men to help hauling the beams up in the heat. It's extremely hard and hot, not to mention dangerous, work. I climbed up before the blocks went up and had a minor height-freight freeze. Now if only we can make up our minds what windows we want upstairs...

Week 5: plastering and (holding thumbs) a roof

The first of the three levels we are building is now up to roof height. We are waiting (and waiting...) for Bobcrete to deliver the rib and block system, so in the meantime the guys are starting to plaster the walls. (Actually the electricity is meant to go into the walls before they plaster, but the electrician is in Riversdale for the week... ) In the meantime im still chasing down that elusive sliding folding door from the company who has been liquidated. All in a days work i suppose... More about our bathroom fittings soon!

Progress!

After some initial panicking and sweating about the builder deviating from the engineers drawings, we had the engineers in and they gave the foundations and the underpinning the thumbs up. (Underpinning, I soon found out, means excavating under an existing wall and then strenghthening and stabilising it with brick and concrete to make it strong enough, in our case, to carry the weight of three stories on top of it. You have to do this in sections to keep the wall stable.)

Hard to believe that this pic was taken 2 days ago!



And here's the start of another wall...


...and more progress on the other side

Day 4 Keep calm and carry on!

In times like these you need some extra help, sometimes in the form of a desktop or poster that has to carve itself into your subconscious, ensuring you dont commit any crimes in a moment of madness. Look no further than the classic British WW2 poster. You can make it a desktop as I have or order it from Etsy.com.

Welcome to Woodstock

This is our little green house in the suburb of Walmer Estate in the greater Woodstock area, Cape Town. It was very run down when we bought it, but with a lick of paint and a lot of TLC, its starting to look really nice now! ...except for the back of the house. This is where we want to break down the current bathroom, build a storeroom, a new dining nook, a stoep, a bathroom and an office upstairs.

It has been over 4 months now since we submitted or plans to council- and still they are coming back with changes and objections. Most recently - after spending weeks trying to get a particularly elusive neighbour to sign a letter of no objection for our renovation, my architect has advised us to also get the signatures of our local councilor and the Rate Payers Association too! Who next? Should I just get the signature of the President for good measure as well? Has anyone else had these problems?