Work has begun in earnest this week on the garage and the extension on the balcony, so here's a quick run through of the work so far:
Gancho up on the garage roof with a huge pneumatic drill and NO safety gear! In the end it turned out the roof was quite well stuck together with the metal grids inside it but I was still horrified to see first Peter standing half inside the garage knocking bricks out with a hammer and now Gancho drilling away up there, especially when he got right near the edge of the garage and was still chopping chunks off.
The garage from the street as demolition begins.
And the walls come a-tumbling down. The only casualty in the end were my ladders which got hit by a chunk of wall and got a bit mangled.
After only a couple of days the entire thing was reduced to rubble. The bricks were moved to one side to try and salvage as many as possible to re-use and the rest smashed up to get the old metal out for scrap (at 35 stotinkis a kilo apparently).
Then came the digger. It was quite handy actually that there had been a problem with the water mains that day and they were in the area trying to find the source of the problem in the pipe lines. Since Peter works for the water company he managed to divert the digger for an hour so I only had to pay for the use of the vehicle and not for bringing it all the way here as well, saying 100 levs. Apologies to everyone who had to wait an extra hour for their water supply to be reconnected though :)
Dumping the rubble onto the truck. The big tree in the foreground has been a bit of a bone of contention. All the Bulgarians maintain that the roots will soon mess up the garage floor, that they will creep out further and demolish my house and that the whole tree is generally a big nuisance and should be removed. My point of view is that it's a tree! A lovely old tree that has woodpeckers and walnuts. Therefore the tree stays, for the time being. I noticed that both the digger and later the cement lorry gave it a few secret nudges now and then but the tree and I won through and it remains there. Of course the minute I see my garage floor cracking I'll take a chain saw to it myself!
Here is the said cement lorry. He arrived over half an hour early and the ground wasn't even ready so poor Gancho and Peter had to dash around like crazy laying out the metal grids and making sure everything was level. The lorry itself couldn't manoeuvre properly (the tree was blamed again for this!) and this picture shows the closest he could get to the garage base. Engines on, chute ready, down comes the cement...
...and off snaps the chute dumping cement all over the place. This caused horrendous problems. They now had to put a load of metal sheeting in the streets to pour the cement onto and then spend a good 2 or 3 days barrowing it into the garage. I've been told they're never going to use this cement firm again.
Friday the second big project began and that's the extension onto the balcony to make a much bigger shaded area on the patio. This will be superb when it's finished because it will create an area that's not only shady but nice and dry too, so I can safely have a table and chairs out there without having to cover it up all the time, and also my stash of winter wood will fit very well up on end. This is Dave and Keith busy fixing the support beams together and shaping the edges.
And now the whole thing begins to be assembled beginning with the big panel of wood on the edge of the balcony which will support the roof timbers.
So, busy busy time but very VERY exciting. And what have I been doing? Well, my job has been to paint all the garage timbers with bochemit and also some grund to give a good protection against woodworm, mould, damp etc and to hack up the branches and small shrubs which were chopped down near the garage. Phew, exhausted!
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