At last – the finished patio

Above and immediately below you can see the final laid patio.  There was a little glitch (much to Nigel’s embarrasment) when the lads got the pattern wrong and Nigel didn’t see it until he returned from doing some chores off site 😦 but it didn’t take too long to fix.  Looks great eh? The bits of rebar sticking up are where the posts for the pergola will eventually be fitted.

Last month we told you that there were lots of preparations going on for the laying of the patio slab – 100sqm of concrete slab and reinforcement, on which our patio pavers will sit nicely.  Well half of the concrete slab was poured but then (a) the concrete supplier was late (or forgot or couldn’t be bothered) and (b) the weather turned and it was tipping it down – not good concrete pouring weather.  So it was postponed and the second half of the slab was poured in the first week of October. They also poured the concrete for some of the new, damproofed floors in the ground floor of the main house (our bedroom, bathroom and office).

Nigel and the guys have now started on the new walls for the kitchen block, then they will cut the holes for the windows in the barn and brick up the rest of the barn – you can see on the annotated picture below showing where the walls that have got to be built and windows will be installed.  We will be using 2,500 (or so) bricks harvested from the second house on the property that we are carefully demolishing.  The timber from this other house will be saved for other projects (like the chicken coop, pig sty, etc. that all have to built sometime) and we will harvest all the other bricks and tiles.  The mud bricks that make up a large part of the building will be spread over the land and eventually break down (we hope) to become part of the cultivated areas.