Here I Go Again!

Unless I want the place to look permanently like a Builders Yard, it looks as if I am going to have to get down and dirty again! 🙂  this morning, building materials I ordered yesterday arrived.

I don\’t think my Assistants were too impressed, it is the thought of being covered in cement dust again!

The first job is a bit of concreting, when we moved here, Marcela was a keen Gardener… I say \’was\’ advisedly, it lasted all of six months if that, and once she had pulled up all her seedlings thinking they were weeds, that was the end of that!  There is a patch between the pool and the house, that was gravelled, with a low wall, but along with the boundary wall and a lot of the pool surround, this had cracked up, so I removed the wall, and now I am going to concrete over this patch, creating a couple of levels that we can put terracotta pots on for decoration, without plants!!!

That is the easy job, and I may well do that tomorrow, then comes the harder part, more rendering, this time I have bought fine sand, because it is house walls that are going to be rendered, at the moment, only the front of the house has any render, the other three walls have been left as ladrillos, a type of brick, this is common in Colombia, but it looks unsightly and you suffer from damp ingress if the pointing is not up to scratch, which it is not and we do!!!

The one problem I have is access, I can get to all the ground floor walls (referred to as first floor here, which has lead to some confusion in the past!), but have very limited access to the upper floor, so I may not be able to render that, time will tell. Anyway here are the \’before\’ pictures…

Rear house wall, with a  maximum 30\” of space before the back fence

Drying area / Zona de Ropa Upper floor wall, but a wide roof beneath with a covering that can\’t be walked on  The only access to the above wall, would be from the balcony, or out of the windows, which can be removed, but I am not sufficiently proficient to lean out and do any work, never mind rendering and then painting. If anyone has any bright ideas, please comment! I probably won\’t get started until next week, as the next two Mondays are Fiestas, so I will be tidying up before the Mother-in-law arrives!