Sunday 23 March 2014

Another leak

Hooray!

Thursday morning and DH surprises me by telling me that he is going to move all his tools and toolboxes, bicycles and gardening equipment into the bodega, (about time, I hear you say. No? It must just be me then?). This will mean that we can finally use the front entrance to our house, without tripping over ourselves and all the 'stuff' that has accumulated in the porch/passageway these last few months.


The terrace extension.
Nonetheless, my happiness is extremely short-lived as it appears that the terrace is still leaking. Same place as last time, where we extended it to be precise. Not only that, but the tiles have cracked as well. It's just too hot there, even with the dappled shade from the palm tree. 

Fan-bloody-tastic!

Yet another set-back and a new dilemma, namely what on earth shall we use for the floor covering now? After all, it is only half of the terrace that has to be altered; rather than try and match the ceramic tiles that are already in position, we rack our brains trying to decide on a contrasting material, in the hope of making a 'patched-up job' look like a 'design feature' A whitish ceramic tile perhaps? Decking? Shingle? Maybe even some kind of fake grass? None of which 'float my boat'. Dark grey pebbles are a possibility though.

So, on Thursday and Friday, the builders set about lifting the tiles off the offending area, for a third time. They re-enforced the floor again with zinc sheets and yet even more cement. 

Meanwhile DH went in search of roughly 12 square metres of 'piedras de bolas', ball stones. The labourers that he took to help him, were all in favour of digging the pebbles up from the river-bed, as is so often done here in CR. However, DH chose what he thought would be an easiest solution and decided to buy the rocks instead. 

Scattered sacks of 'ball stones'.
On arriving at the stone-works though, DH had the choice of either a digger emptying boulders into the pick-up (BOULDERS not stones mind-you, which would mean us breaking them into smaller pieces) or hand-pick the pebbles himself, load  into sacks and then onto the truck. Hmm, decisions, decisions! So back breaking work ensued, picking over and loading individual pebbles , all 12 sacks of them - a bargain price though as only $30 for the whole lot!

Next week, the fun begins when we ask the builders to lay the pebbles into the concrete evenly. Should be entertaining. I'll report back on their progress!






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