Principal roof rafter and crossbeam

I had to start with this picture as I liked it most. Was at “the land” this Thursday and oh my. Quite a lot going on. Two teams are now working – one for the house and another one for the pool. Was a bit crazy – trucks, diggers, a proper crane and lots of people. We met with electrician and a carpenter (the guy who is making windows) – time is coming when decisions will need to be made fast. Like the colour of the windows and shutters. White or gray, white or grey?

For example, I could (and probably should) write a whole post only on various details on the windows. The main question being. If one is as particular as I can be about details, should one:

a) insist that things are “just so”

b) accept (as one does know that from the experience) that one gets used to to not-so-prefect-detail and after a while one stops noticing them.

Hmmmm. What do you think I choose to do?

Getting ready for the roof

Beams – ready for the roof

Back on the exciting things. We arrived at the building site around 11am – they were just starting on beams and rafters. And by the time we left the principle rafter in one of the apartments (one on the first picture above) was up. Very cool.

First crossbeam

I hope I got my terminology right – beams, rafters, etc. They are all already painted white – that’s how they will be. The space will be tall, cool and naturally quite dark (windows are small to enable hiding from scorching sun and heat outside). The roof on the inside and the walls will be white. So that it is not too dark and scary, but rather light and cool.

Above is a pretty picture of the horizontal stone tiles – this is the edge of the roof. I have no idea how to explain this in Croatian let alone English so you will have to wait for the finished roof picture to see how will this look. In the meantime, enjoy the gorgeous blue of the sky.

While one team is busy on the roof, another has started the pool foundation. First they level the ground with stone and some basic cement mixture and then they will pour real concrete.

Starting the pool foundation

Again – they were still only digging the ground at 11am and by 1.30pm the base for half the pool was finished.

Almost ready for part of the pool foundation

I like nice and efficient piece of machinery

Between all the discussions and talks about this and that (details, details), I had a quick sneak out the take a few photos of the woodland.

Woodland

You may remember that the land is huge (our own definition of huge, meaning we are scared of how will we maintain it) – about 8000m2. And it was largely untouched for at least 20 years. Completely overgrown, mostly with wild blackberry bushes I think – we couldn’t even see through, let-alone walk through it. As Vanja and I realised that we will extremely unlikely have the time or the knowhow this winter to do it, and as spring was approaching – you shouldn’t do the clearing as things start growing again – we decided to cash out and ask lovely Slađana to organise the clear-out.

And it made a huuuge difference. When we visited with our UK family was the first time I saw the cleared out land. I was probably more surprised and excited about it than anybody else did (as they didn’t see it overgrown). Looked like completely new piece of land.

Anyway, it looks great – I am now waiting for it all to start shooting through again – that will be a battle – I hope between Vanja and the nature. And may Vanja win, hahaha. Ok, maybe not win completely, just a bit.

Our lovely oak trees

I totally see a bench over there and a hammock or two over here.

Back to the machinery at the end (I guess it was not complete waste of my time studying engineering of sorts, I really do like machines and stuff) – there was even a hanging cement mixer at the building site for a few hours.

Hanging cement mixer