Spring and the crane

Huh, I had some WordPress issues today. Or should I say – I was a dumb user – clicked the wrong button and it published unfinished entry – images without words. I guess images are more important, but hey, some commentary is OK as well I hope.

The plan is to move this blog  (pretty soon) to a new location – ie proper Pruga website. Domain is bought, hosting arranged. Just need to do some finishing touches on the design – we are saying there (I think) that we are accepting guests in August and September, hohoho. Not sure if I will change that by the time we go live with the site. Although things are still going very nicely and the preparation for this build was a very long two years – it suddenly seems soon. And, OMG will we really finish it?

Roof beams from the inside

Roof beams from the outside

Lots more progress on the roof since last time. First the rest of the beams.

Roof insulation

And then the insulation. Tomorrow, guttering people are starting and maybe (?) next week the roof tiles will go on. All that land and the house, for various, boring planning permission rules, had to be attached to the neighbouring land to the north. Unless we wanted to take the whole house down and move it by four meters southwards, which we didn’t. This means that some clever tricks were performed by the architect and now by the builders and guttering people to make sure that no gutters cross the wall line – as the wall line is also the diving line between us and the neighbours. To make the story shorter – gutter will be integral to the roof structure and hopefully will look cool and different than what the above picture might make you think (if indeed you are thinking about these gutters).

Pool shell is finished

The pool shell is finished – pool is pretty big, and will likely be impressive. As long as it won’t be overwhelming – to maintain mostly.

View from the pool corner – towards west

View from the pool corner – towards south

I was standing in the shell trying to imagine how it might look like when swimming and resting on the edge. Imagine the trees all green, no builder’s jacket on that tree right in the front, no iron rods and planks sticking out… restful?

Hiccup no. 1

And, yes, we had the first hiccup, problem, or should I say, in the silly manner of my old profession, a challenge. May it be the only one and may it be resolved to the happiness of all involved.  So, the pool, somehow, we are not getting into details here, was build at least 30cm more towards south than it should have been if drawings were followed. (Those in the UK – can you imagine Kevin’s dramatic voiceover now?) The stone wall you can see above should be continued all along pool engine room (red brick wall that you can see) – so the engine room “seamlessly blends into the existing environment”. Haha. Right now it looks like quite an eyesore – and I am being reassured it can be seamlessly adjusted to blend still. After initially being a bit upset (and Vjeko the architect even more than me) I am now cool and collected and hoping for the best. There will be pictures to show.

Choosing grey – props

I think in my last post I mentioned the dilemma between grey and white windows. (BTW I was sure that the UK spelling is “gray”, but Wikipedia tells me “… gray was also in common usage in the UK until the second half of the 20th century”. So I decided to go with grey here, in with the kids. The fact that I lived in Oxford – of all places in the UK –  might explain the “gray” in my head.)

More importantly, Vjeko showed up at the building site yesterday with a big sheet of (light) grey cardboard, the carpenter brought an example of the white window with him so we were choosing and comparing. Stones were taken from old walls to “pick up the colour from the surroundings”. All pretty serious.

Greys

In the end, we went for rather dark greenish-grey – you can just about pick out number 135 on the picture above – 4th from the bottom in the rightmost palette. White looked too stark and glaring, lighter grey too wishy-washy. Plus, darker grey will look pretty cool from the inside – as a contrast to (mostly white) walls.

Builders

Random picture of some overalls inside the house.

The crane

Next, as soon as the crane is removed (which should be as soon as roof tiles are finished), they are going to re-digg the whole front yard – for main pipework (water, waste, electricity, phone) – for all the apartments and the pool. That will be a mess but when finished, will mean we are done with big machinery on the site. Which in turn means that I am now busy with choosing bathroom fixtures, light switches, electrical sockets, floor treatments, bathroom wall treatments (notice I didn’t say tiles – makes things a bit complicated), etc, etc.

Funny thing is that I thought I had all that figured out even before the build started. Until I was presented with two types of light switches. Huh.