Lemons and stones

Planting spree. Well, lemons. Five two-color variegated lemon trees. Nice ones! These lemons are pink on the inside. And a "sweet lime", whatever that is. And a pink grapefruit, and a regular lime.

Now, can you spot what they all have in common?

Another silly window

Another one. See how the inside is lower than the outside? Completely ridiculous.

These windows are very thick, about 5cm, and are made to fit the window frame very precisely. Which is wrong, because when the window opens or closes the outside edge touches the frame, and thus splinters either the window sill or the edge of the window, or both. Here both happened. Hence the sort of complicated fracture that needed repair.

Made a groove in the window frame with a chisel, mounted an aluminium profile sunken in the wood, almost flush with the window. Now it does not touch the frame when opening or closing. Also "chamfered" the edge of the window a bit.

And mounted the alu profiles to keep the rain out, this also is, and hopefully was, a leaky window.

Silly windows

We have windows that are more or less well made. Theres one thing that is not great: when it rains they leak: water passes under the windows. Can you see why, as engineer Jansen did? (These windows open to the inside.)

Yes, the window sill is highest outside, and every step to the inside is one centimeter lower. So any water that reaches the underside of the windows will want to come inside, and it does. Very silly.

There are wooden slats at the bottom of the windows, even with anti-capillary grooves, but they don't work, as the window sill is quite wide and horizontal. It should have been slightly tilted so water drains away. It isn't, and the water doesn't, and will reach the bottom of the windows, and leak inside. More than enough to thoroughly soak a big bath towel.

Engineer Jansen screwed an extra aluminium L-profile onto the window sill, and attached a U-profile onto the bottom of the windows, so water will drain off off the U-profile, on the outside of the L-profile. There it will drain away. At least it should not reach the inside of the house any more.

Now eagerly awaiting rain

Orchard windshield

If the weather is bad here it's either because there is a huge amount of rain, or a very strong wind from the hills. Or both. Not nice for young trees in our orchard, nor for the bougainvillea in the fence. Actually, the bougainvillea in the fence is there to keep the wind out, and prying eyes. But, with so much wind the bougainvilleas grow less fast than wanted, so: a windshield. 3 rolls of 1.5x10 meters mesh, attached to the wire mesh with nylon binders and metal rings. The metal rings as to not tear the mesh. When it's windy, yes.

We'll ask our constructor to add some metal poles at 45º, to make the fence stronger. Else it may blow over..

Cleaning the orchard

Cleaning the orchard - a hundred ugly conifer like shrubs taking up space. First engineer Jansen tried sawing, but they are very tough. Then he found out they only have a pen root, so you can pull them out, now the soil is damp, after the rain. Looking forward to setting fire..

Shadesails

There was a time that I would not dream of drilling holes in the walls of the house. That time is over. Put two big hooks high up the walls in the corners to put up shadesails. Priorities, eh.

Quite difficult to get a triangle tensioned right! (It's not.)

WC float

Another thing that's been irritating for years: an intermittently not entirely closing wc float valve.

When you've woken up, bathroom, pee, flush, wash hands, back to bed, and... psssssh! drip!

pssssh! drip!


drip!



drip! drip!

*groan* Out of bed, fiddle flush button, back to bed. *grumble*

Our friendly neighbour told us once that in these cases there usually is a piece of grit or a small stone, or something in the little valve mechanism. Just take it apart, clean, and it's fixed. That's been true a few times. (Thanks, Joseph Knapp!)

Replaced the gasket of the flush valve some time ago, which temporarily fixed it.

But still, at times it would still continue dripping. And, the stop-mechanism didn't work properly anymore. And now it had returned once again.

But, as this is an Ansteystyle installed loo, there were some problems. The tap that connects the wc to the water pipe does not close off entirely. And, as the nuts on the flexible hose were a bit rusted they could not be turned, so I could not disconnect the loo valve. Well, I could, but only by first taking the plastic float valve apart inside the cistern, so I could turn the plastic bit to screw it out of the flexible hose's nut. Meanwhile water would spray from the flexible hose. In Dutch we call that a "water ballet".

Indeed, also this time there was a little bit of rubbish in the mechanism. But when I reinstalled the valve, a bit of (old) plastic broke off, water kept spraying, engineer Jansen kept on cursing, took pictures of the offending interior of the cistern, and went off to the Almacen del Installador for new plastic bits. And a new flexible hose with turnable bolts.

Reinstalled all in less than 10 minutes. All fixed, and we now have a working stop button!

Woke up yesterday night. *drip!* .... *drip!*
But, those were crickets or some insect, outside, making exactly that sound.

The Doors - study R (2)

This was the worst door. Broken. Eaten. But, work, polyurethane glue and some metal reinforcement can do a lot.

Basic construction is nice heavy planks, with thinner wood panels. Hole-and-pegs in the corners.

This door was varnished, stained, or whatever, with a dark brown stuff. Took that off where necessary for reconstruction, but left part of it in place because I do like the darker colour. You can use wood oil with a colour, but I don't have pigments for oil. So, all natural here. Some hidden edges still have some nasty green paint. Left that there for posterity.

Where there are a lot of holes from wood nibbling critters I have not spared the filler paste with fibre.

This one needed some reconstruction...

The Doors - the bathroom (1)

There are quite some nicely made old doors in this house. Real craftmanship, heavy wood. But, also: old, nibbled at. One even broken apart. Here's our bathroom door, one of the 5 doors that need(ed) work.

Apparently largely untreated, un-varnished, un-oiled, un-whatevered. Have I just sanded away the patina of two ages? Well, I won't try to sand away all old scratches and dents.

Who knows what these doors have witnessed. Life, death, sex, murder? They're more scratched at the lower half than above. Probably they were kicked or bumped into quite a few times during the ages.

Finished:

Work in progress:

Gutters, garage, cave room and terrace - finished!

In "gutters-or-no-gutters" we discussed that we opted for ground floor gutters. This is how it turned out:

This should prove one of the most important measures: there's a slab of concrete under these tiles, where there was sand and gravel before, allowing water to reach the back wall, which indeed was damp on the inside, too.

Any water splashing down ends up in these canals. The new andaluz tiles on the walls protect the walls. The staircase has turned out quite nice too. We think. Oh, the hand railings need to be put back still.

The terrace is now tiled:

Still some wet spots in the garage when it rains heavily:

That is caused by water running off against the wall, where a little bit still seeps into the wall and below. We'll put row of small tiles on the wall there, or use that terrace-rubber-paint.

The garage floor was painted with spcial paint for garage floors:

The cave has it's new Kerakoll breathing plaster. And you can see where the walls are still damp, a few weeks later:

This will slowly dry out in time. Moisture that until now was trapped under "plastico wallpaint".

This is now the front of the house:

Not strictly necessary for protection, but for appearance.