A Week Before Christmas and ...
It looks as though the accelerator has been stomped on hard. This week has seen the floor screed laid and this has made a massive difference to the look of the house - in fact it looks like a home rather than a building site for the first time.
The first picture this week illustrates what I mean:
This gave me a big WOW factor: This is the living area, with the photo taken from what will be the kitchen breakfast bar towards the entrance archway / lobby. I'm liking the look of the stairs, and though a bit of a space hog (due to legislation, as previously mentioned), they do look the business. The stairs will have glass balustrades fitted for safety.
At the entrance lobby the wall boxes have been fitted for the ECB units and the telecoms. So all the electrical mains switches are in one place and will look tidy.
At a guess the three boxes are for 1/Upstairs. 2/Water Heaters. 3/Downstairs.
Now, go and sort out that spaghetti... yup, it's a good job that they are colour coded, otherwise I can only imagine the nightmare that this would be. Electricians eh? So, this is under the stairs, in the entrance lobby - under-stairs storage to the left and front door to the right. Plenty of work to do here...
So, three months from now I will be living here... the house will not likely be completely finished, but I have no option. I will likely be camping in the house :) I arrive on the 5th of March and have booked the cottage just down the road to stay in - but it is only available until the 19th of March, so whatever, I am in there on the 19th, sleeping bag and warm togs... Seriously, I'm hoping the container (see below in Brain Zone) will be there with a mattress!
The picture below shows the bedroom flooded with light, as there is a large french window to the right. Through the arch and to the left is a door through to the living area.
This is the archway from the bedroom looking through from the dressing room. Just a nice feature and pleasing on the eye, and separates storage space from sleeping space. In theory, this should keep the bedroom streamlined and free of clutter.
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You may be wondering why some of the walls have been rendered in concrete, whilst others have not been rendered, and been left as rough blocks?
Well, all the inside walls have been rendered, whilst the exterior facing walls will not be rendered but rather insulated and plasterboard before finally skimming. At that point, all the inside concrete rendered walls will also be skimmed with plaster.
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The build has few doors, and those of you who have followed the blog will see on the plans that apart from cupboard doors under the stairs, there are only three doors. One front door, one bedroom door and one sliding door to the bathroom. There will be one other sliding door up on the mezzanine with the planned guest loo. I'm still awaiting a price for this addition from the builder. I'm not anticipating a great cost as it is just stud partition, door, toilet with built in basin and the plumbing.
Talking of plumbing and such things:
Blinded by the light: Under the kitchen window the water, waste and electrics are in place for the kitchen sink and the electric water heater. Let's hope everything lines up as expected. The plumber has all the installation sheets of the units to be fitted... so...
And outside trenches have been dug to the side of the entrance porch to give installation and maintenance access for all the services. Complicated stuff.
There are numerous connections out of the house....
Dealing with the dirty stuff first, there is the 'Black Water'. A polite term for poo and pee. This exits the house underground and makes its way downhill to the bio-treatment tank via several maintenance sinks with inspection covers. Note it is not a cess pit that needs frequent emptying. Instead, an active culture digests all the nasties in several stages, filters and discharges clean, safe water way down to the field.
Don't worry. All the houses outside of town (Horta) use these systems and there is no pong of effluent or seepage of nasties littering the landscape. They work really well, as long as a few rules are followed: No foreign objects down the loo such as so called 'flushable tissues', tampons or pads... no bleach - only approved cleaners can be used, otherwise the digesting bacteria would be killed.
Apparently these only need emptying at long service intervals and all that is removed is grey inactive sludge. Still not nice though, so specialist companies undertake this work using the correct pumps and sanitisation.
The waste water coming out of the sink, basin and shower are referred to as 'Grey Water' and of course should contain no pathogens. So this water is taken to a separate filter tank and simply filtered by a porous material to remove and small solids. Again a few rules need to be followed: No disposing of cooking oil or vegetable matter / cooking waste down the kitchen sink, no use of bleaches, as only bio-friendly cleaning products should be used. The same goes for washing up liquid really. Easy to do, as that is what is sold in the shops on the island.
Of course there is the fresh water supply to the house. Faial's water is perfectly good to drink and does not contain all the chemicals that we have to tolerate in the UK. I haven't noticed any unpleasantness to the taste. Mind, why drink water when beer is so cheap?
Electricity is supplied from the roadside electrical box that was installed at the start of the build. The voltage, thankfully, is the same as that used in the UK, so all good.... apart from those pesky plugs.
The largest amount of electrical kit in the house will be in the studio, and looking at the second picture in the blog you can see that there are three cabinets for electrics - I imagine one will be for the mezzanine level. For this sensitive equipment I will be running all the power through two large power-blocks, these have surge protection and will convert from the euro plug to the UK standard three pin.
Tele-comms is also connected... I'm not sure about the details of this yet, but I do know that the speed on the island comes at a base of 100mb/sec. Well, that's what it is sold as. I will report back to let you know if this is a reality.
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The Brain Zone:
Pensions
This week has seen me sign all of the forms for the pensions that I've paid into over the years. What a nightmare to get it all together: I highly recommend using a financial adviser just to get everything together and check out the figures. If you have a lot of time and are not stressed with other issues, then sure you can do it yourself... but in my case, I just have too much going on and for a small fee I have peace of mind that someone is holding my hand.
One thing that really surprised me when the last piece of the puzzle came into place (my current works pension) was that it wouldn't be finally calculated until after I have finished work.
So the forms for that will not be sent out until after I have retired. This is a bit bonkers. And I leave for Faial very shortly after my retirement. So my financial genius to the rescue, and he is trying to organise something with the pension company, so I can provide the required authorisation in advance.
Container
My project manager has requested that the container arrives at the house towards the end of February, as it contains the water heaters, light fittings and white goods that will be needed by the trades. I think I mentioned this last week...
Simple? One would think so. Obviously, I am going for a 'door to door' solution. This means that everything is collected from my house here, packed (where needed, as I've done most myself already) and stacked properly, transported and then unpacked and placed in the correct rooms / regions within the house on Faial.
So far I am waiting for two quotes. One company has been completely on the ball, whilst the other has not mailed me back or been in touch for over a week - so they are out of the running... as I need a company that cares about customer service.
Customer service and care comes at a cost though - I am awaiting their quote for a 20ft container and I know what the ball-park should be, so I just hope they can get the figures good. Fingers crossed.
The Log Burner
I'm most likely going to ship this with my other goods from the UK as I have found a contemporary product at a good price. I'm awaiting advice from my project manager though before ordering, as he may advise that a local company is better in terms of installation cost if I buy the stove from them...
The Sofa and Dining Table
I've put this on hold until after Christmas. There may be some in-stock deals going.
Other brain melt ...
As the time is getting shorter then the more frantic things seem to get, as I realise just what I'm doing. I'm being really honest here; It is scary.
I'm taking a perfectly hum-drum life and swapping it on its head. I'm taking a big hit on fiscal stability, spending thousands like there is no tomorrow and have more organisation to do than seems humanly possible.
But, y'know what?
Yea. Freck it. At the end of the day, I will be moving onto a new unexplored time of my life, making new friends and having time to do my own thing. In three months time it should all be settled down and all the organisational problems in the rear view mirror.
Hopefully this blog will be an inspiration to those that would like to make a significant change to their current life, and not a dire warning. It's cool.
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Next Up: .... Baby Jesus's Birthday Stops Building Work
