The vases I haven’t seen for 5 years
Today, after finally clearing a bookcase of books, I treated myself to opening a box in which ornaments have been in storage for about 5 years.
I was most longing to see 2 china vases which were my mother’s.
They used to stand on the mantelpiece and she would put cut flowers in them.
I’m quite happy just to have them sitting on a shelf in the bookcase. They’re so beautiful I couldn’t improve on them.
It’s been so wet lately that the hillside where our spring used to emerge is like a sodden sponge. That probably accounts for the fact that water has started to come through the system we built to take advantage of the spring.
The blue pig with its 'rationalised' pipe
In any case, today I noticed that there was water escaping from a hole in the red corrugated pipe that brings the water to the blue pig. I tried to mend it and did in fact succeed in slowing down the leak, only for it to transfer itself with great gusto to somewhere else.
I looked carefully at that stretch of the corrugated pipe and it was in very bad shape, broken down by UV and cut through by the wire which all builders here seem to regard as indispensable for supporting everything.
So I cut out the whole section of rotten pipe, right through to where it went into the grey pipework next to the blue pig, and rationalised the route of the rest of the corrugated pipe so as to make up the slack.
I then twisted a spare piece of red corrugated into the grey pipework and attached it with insulating tape to the main body of the corrugated.
It’s a Heath Robinson affair which I’m sure won’t last very long, but when I last went near I could hear the music of the water falling into the blue pig. It hasn’t flowed to the pond yet but I hope it will before my construction collapses.
It would be wonderful if our spring had actually returned, but I daren’t allow myself to hope.
The grouting of the steps was done today.
I find the technique quite extraordinary: a large proportion of the tiled area is covered with grout before it is wiped off.
The pool steps being grouted
The steps have a bit of a ‘Battenburg cake’ look about them, but I think that will calm down when the grout starts to get dusty and chalky like it has on the floor (which has the same colour grout).
The finished article
At least the steps look neat now. All I need to do is tidy up round them!
Just before Easter, I had a phonecall from the man who tiled the floor and the bathroom walls upstairs. He said he had a few days without any scheduled work, and did we have a use for him?
The pool steps after the 'first fix' of tiling
Since he did a very nice job last time, I asked him to quote for tiling the pool steps we had constructed out of blocks. His price was fine.
He started today with 2 sessions, morning and afternoon.
After coating all the surfaces of the blocks with mortar, including embedding some little strips of levelling metal, he laid the treads and the risers though not yet the sides of the steps.
I gave him tiles left over from doing the floor, so the steps will look like an ‘organic’ part of the room, but for the risers he used spare tiles from the kitchen!
There are little coloured spacers sticking out everywhere. Plus some anti-dog measures …
He’s an unbelievably meticulous worker with very strong aesthetic ideas – I’m delighted to let him get on with it!
Categories: Our house, Swimming Pool
Tags: blocks, floor, mortar, pool steps, quote, riser, spacer, tile, tiling, tread
I had an unexpected visit today from 2 Albanian brothers who have worked for us (separately) in the past. They wanted to see how we were getting on and – probably – check whether anyone else has worked for us recently.
The older of the brothers helped us with the construction of a retaining wall next to the house, for which Clive directed the coping and I had the task of explaining that it was called ‘cock and hen’.
Part of the wall with its cock and hen coping
The idea of this traditional technique was, originally, that any over-large or awkwardly-shaped stones that couldn’t be fitted into the lines of the body of the wall would find a home on top. A stone that stood up and a stone that lay down were alternated, hence the name.
The wall was made 4 years ago but the name had stuck in its builder’s memory – ‘gallo e gallina’ in Italian!
Recent Comments