September 2015 – Update

Again I have to start with an apology for being late with getting the update to the blog done this month, it’s just time. I am always just waiting for that extra little thing to happen before I do the update.

EntranceThere has been a little progress with the work that the builder of the house has to do, but only very little, but at least it’s something.

Unfortunately it’s the smaller, easier things that are getting looked at, for example the painting of the entrance, the bigger items; in fairness they are not huge, just annoying are not getting the attention we would like.

However there has been a lot of progress on the swimming pool front. As mentioned in my last blog we had awarded the contract to put the pool in and true to his word the company have been making excellent progress over the past few weeks, dispite the fact that the weather turned wet for a few days, good for the ground but not so good when trying to put in a pool.

NextTimeWeSeeWe took a picture just before we left at the end of August of the area where the pool was to be constructed and posted it on facebook, saying the next time we see this there should be a swimming pool there. At the time I think we were just hopeful but it seems that it’s going to be very close. Here is the photo I am referring to.

MarkingOut

The first stage was to mark out the area where the pool was to go.

Next was the digging out, now this we thought might cause a few issues as the ground around the area does have a number of very large rocks, which would have hindered the digging and possible necessitate the hire of larger earth moving equipment. We had allowed a bit extra in the budget should this be the case, we had been advised that if required it was usually about €30 a hour and the maximum should be about 10 hours over 2 days hopefully. As it turned out it was not required. This was excellent news.

MuddyDryMudHere are a few photos just after the digging out, you can see the weather had changed and the ground was very wet. It all looks very messy and dirty at this point. However the sun soon returned and the ground dried and construction was able to continue.

BrickingUpHere we are a week later and you can see the basic shape and layout, although it looks smaller in these pictures that we thought, however it is just the deceptive camera angles and it is 9 x 4 meters, in later pictures you can see the difference.

RenderedBy this week, yes I know it’s really October but as the photos have just come in and the construction has moved on so much, I have included them in the blog for September, I think you can really start to get an impression of what it is going to look like when finished.

We are still negotiating on the landscaping contract, we finally got the second of the budgets this week, but there is a very big differences between the values so there is no way they can be like for like in terms of the content, so a little more work to do there before we can get the work done.

Watch out for Octobers update, more positive news on the swimming pool we hope, and news maybe on the landscaping and of course we will have had another visit to site.

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2 Responses to September 2015 – Update

  1. Trying to get like-for-like contracts seems to be a major issue. ‘Just slightly vague’ seems to be modus operandus. 🙁 Good luck!

  2. Interesting some of the parallels between building a new build and renovating an existing building which is what we did .Well done ,the building looks amazing !!
    Check out the blog on our rebuild .We have had delays but hopefully our house should be completed by the spring !!??
    Our blog hevsdave.blogspot.co.uk

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