Garden at 208

A place for the rubble at 208
Originally uploaded by Sibad.

Thursday, April 26, 2007
Where in a sokaki of tightly linked buildings do you put the building rubble? Our solution is to move it to part of the garden. This is the before picture.
We’ll be going home Tuesday afternoon. Our roofer said “Your roof will done by then, but check your neighbours don't mind noise on Sunday." It was raining this morning, the work secured with a sheet of plastic. Extra tiles, mortar mix, insulation, wax paper were delivered and stacked this morning.

We’re thinking we’ve now got a mix of people doing work we can afford and with whom we can keep in touch by e-mail, who trust us enough to cover cash flow delays, and who understand our wishes. After the electrics, the renewing of the kitchen, hall and downstairs bedroom ceilings and the roof comes making one space out of the two front upstairs bedrooms, with the wood stove and flue moved to its eastern wall, and the stairs widened. Then we could have the garden part tiled – over the flattened rubble.
Word of mouth led us to holiday flats in Pyrgi being refurnished. We salvaged a cane sitting room suite with cushions and a low table, drove it home, and lifted it upstairs with a rope over the balcony.


Wednesday, April 25, 2007
I cycled into town and did some work at the Arco. The weather has gone cooler and is slightly overcast with spots of rain. Missed my bus to AK so cycled all the way there via Ipsos – with only a couple of breaks for some of the local ginger beer. Drove back to Ayios Markos to collect a sturdy plastic table I’d seen by a waste skip.

The roofing is coming along well. Lin paints almost without a break. With a loaned jack hammer I knocked down the first and largest lot of breeze blocks and made holes for the rain to get away in the ones we’re leaving. Amy called from home. Our neighbour came round and we chatted about the odd things the previous owners and their builder had done with the place – including cutting down two lemon trees and an orange tree - leaving the one in the picture - and removing a side balcony, the door on to it and the outside steps to it, removing rain protection from the side of the house as well as a pleasant part of it, and creating a problem of what to do with the rubble. Lin and I discussed replacing the steps – perhaps iron ones and putting back the upstairs door. Our neighbour showed us two bricks from his house – one with 1590 and another with 1711 inscribed roughly on them.