Progress

This page is made as a way to present pictures and progress info related to the house building. Due to my massive picture posting I've parted this page into months, below you see the links to the pictures from the months passed.

24 December 2006
I thought I got a lot done yesterday, but today I managed to even break that record and put down 35 blocks of Leca, the last 4 where of the heavy 30cm wide type. Like yesterday I had to put in a hour of work in the darkness, and as yesterday, Tore wasn't to good with the mixture from the start of.
But, he improved, and I got a couple of really good mixture - at least I think they where good ones. LOL

When I stopped worked around 16:50 (like yesterday) I had finished of the 6th row in both north and east, and even started on 4 blocks from northwest on the 7th row. And, I put down 4 blocks of the 2nd row along the wall separating the garage from the basement. Heavy large 30cm wide blocks, while the other walls are mostly of the 25cm wide type.
The reason I stopped with the 4 blocks of the 7th row is that this is the first row where the opening for the windows will start to show up, and I stopped at the first break in the wall.

Rest will now have to wait till next year, tomorrow, we are off for a short, hectic, and hopefully nice trip back home to the Netherlands and our house down there.

Pictures:

23 December 2006
Got even more work done today, and had it not been for Tore being unable to produce a good concrete mixture now a days I could have done even more work. But, I/we where able to put down 32 blocks of Leca - which is a record for us! I had to work into the darkness though with an hour, last block was down and I was out of concrete when the clock was passing 16:50.

But, by then I had finished of the 4th row from yesterday in the east, I had put down the whole 5th row in north and as much as I can do in the east without first building up the wall against the basement - a well done job!
It is getting to be high, so I had to use a plank in the east to reach up and work sort of comfortable - but at least it worked fine, and good exercise it is too. LOL

Pictures:

22 December 2006
Got lot of work done today, and had it not been for Tore being unable to produce a good concrete mixture now a days I could have done even more work. But, it been cold, a little over zero during the day, but cold air and some clouds sort of limiting the sun warm made it not so pleasant as two days ago.
Add to the fact we had frost on the ground, the sand to be used with the concrete is frozen,  and whenever Tore made a mixture today it seemed to always end up rather thin - we finally figured out it must be because of the sand holding to much moisture... :-(

This made it hard to keep the blocks level all the way, so of the 25 blocks of the width 25cm I put up today, I seemed to end up lower and lower for each mixture of concrete - but at least I almost finished of the 4th row on both north and east walls - only miss 4 blocks to finish of the east wall.
Meaning that if I only get a good mixture to work with at once, I can make at least one row each day... :-)

Pictures:

20 December 2006
Got some work done today, finally! It was warm today, as in, around one degree above zero from the morning of. :-) Not several degree below like the other 3 days, the only bad factor was the fact Tore didn't feel well when he came back from the store. There where still no papers from the City council people, but he phoned them and was told he could come by and pick up a paper copy at least.
So, he did that, learned also that the papers where laying at the secretary's desk, where it had been since Monday. But, no, Tore could not get them in person, they had to be sent to him, maybe today, or tomorrow, or something.... :-(

My mood been bad lately, and we where suppose to leave for the Netherlands tomorrow, so had little time left for working, and had a few things I wanted done before we left, so I went out to prepare a thread to show my the line to follow while putting down some more Leca blocks, the one of the insulated type.
With them down I would have marked out the whole walls needed done now, and I would have control over their locations all the way. Due to Tore starting to mix concrete I was left with my self to make sure this new thread was parallel to my north/south reference thread - but when I later checked today after I put some blocks down, I had messed it up with 3mm over a length of about 1,5 meter -hated that, but no can do more...
It is not easy, but the good things is that I do the mistake, hence I can not blame other's for it... I mean, that is the sad part... LOL

As I had some concrete left I also was able to put down 5 more blocks on the east walls third row, it only misses a half block and that row is ready too. :-) That half block would be a full block, just turned 90 degree, as that is the intersection with the wall to the basement.

Tomorrow they promised us cold but nice weather, then it is expected the temperature will raise again to over the zero, but stay nice - so in a agreed decisions Tore and I postponed our trip to the Netherlands tomorrow till the 25th of December instead!
Tore phoned ColorLine and asked if we could change our ticket with the Kiel ferry/boat tomorrow till the 25th instead, and sure, that was no problem. Good thing too, as the boat tomorrow is for the time being a slow boat going half speed, meaning the trip would have taken much longer then normal.

So, here we are some more days, we are to have Tore's brother this Christmas, and instead of going home we take the Christmas Eve here, then leave for a short trip home, and back again, just 3 days into the new year...
The weather is suppose to be nice, so why not use it to get some more work done on the garage was my idea to Tore, it's the holiday anyway, back home we can't do much, here we can, so that is the reason we hang around.
Plan to do lot of work Friday, Saturday, and even Sunday if possible.

Time will tell, here is pictures of today's work at least:

16 December 2006
Not a lot of work done today, but this was due to the fact my brother came for a short visit, and I had promised to pick him up at the airport. Add in the fact we had a little frost this morning it was not much we got done.
I cut the 30cm block I put down yesterday just so I could fit down the 25cm U-block I needed to fit in there to fill out the hole in the wall, I also added in the 30cm block needed to fill the other hole in the wall from yesterday, and with that done I had just enough cement left to put on one block on the third row on the east wall in the garage.
This due to the timing factor, and the fact I had asked Tore to make a small batch of concrete to me (due to the time factor and my promise to my brother.)

The day before yesterday (14 December) the weather was not to good, it was foggy and wet, and Tore didn't feel to good, so he slept of the morning time after a trip to the store.
However, that afternoon we where able to cut down the 6 30cm blocks we needed to fit in along the angled wall between basement and garage - a hell of a job as it took many hours and we had to put the light on as it got dark before we where through, and as we just cut our last block down, it started to rain, again... :-(
The reason it was so much work, is that the blocks are 30cm wide, the underlying blocks is 25 cm wide, and the top of those blocks are about 7,5cm above the garage floor... So, we cut of a 25cm or so wide part of the bottom of the 30cm blocks, to a height/depth of 8cm - kinda making a step out of it, and then that was cemented down, making a nice and neat looking block, fitting in with the rest of the garage walls so to speak.

But, then, the 15 December, yesterday, the weather was nice again - more or less at least - and we where able to finish of the 6 30cm blocks we cut the day before, had to take up one and cut it a little more - so it took some time, but we got them down, and we got the northeast corner done and more then halt of the east wall of the garage also got it's third layer of blocks.

Since then, no work been done, got none done the rest of that day, and the 3 next days we had nice weather, but many degrees below zero and no way to melt/get rid of the ice meant no work got done.. :-(

But, here is the pictures showing the work this day:

13 December 2006
Today it was a lovely weather, we finished setting up row 2 in east and nearly all of row 3 in north. We also put up the second block (row 2) between the doors, and put up the first 30cm block between garage and basement (stairs down to basement). Overall, a very good day.

Pictures showing the work this day:

12 December 2006
Yesterday it rained, so no work done, but today we got a lot done. The first batch of concrete was to thin so I used it instead to try to "brush" the outside of Leca blocks over at the shed extension, and to fill in the U-blocks there together with iron.

The next one(s) was much better, so I got the whole second row in north and 4 in east down before it got to dark to do more work, and I was out of mixed concrete... :-) I must admit, the second row was easier and faster - but we have way to many to go - 10 in number it should be...

Pictures showing the work this day:

10 December 2006
Yesterday and today we got some more work done on the garage walls. Being fresh at this, and having a big wish of doing it as correct as possible it takes for ever to put the blocks down, but at least we have got the middle stone between the garage doors down, the end stone (made a 250cm long plank and used that to define the opening, and with a thread marking the east-west placement it was not that hard).
I also managed to put down the first row of the 15cm wide blocks to be used along the part of the garage wall that is directly against the bathroom wall, moving it a slight to the north to a even 8cm distance from my reference thread which marks the center of the tower, the north wall of the house, the center of the basement (on my drawing that is...) and the center of the wood wall in the bathroom towards the garage.
In other words, a important distance to get correct, as that thread will need to go when the carpenters arrive, and I still need a reference in that area.

I also have put down 8 U-blocks at the shed extension - to be filled with concrete later. This marks the first level, and will allow us to start soon to refill the hole in front of the door and make the room there much more accessible.
I was ready with today's work just as it got dark, hence the strange colors on my pictures - sorry about that.

Pictures from this day:

06 December 2006
Today we got the first row on the north wall of the garage done! Being my very first time doing this time of work (for more then corners I mean LOL) I must say it looked good. I used a thread around the corners, and made sure every block was as close/parallel to this thread as I could, and at the same time was as level in both directions at the top as I could.

Pictures from this day:

05 December 2006
Today we got more Leca delivered, in fact all we should need to put up the garage. As it seems like we are the ones that has to do it, as the builder has no people available...
We still have no paper from the city council that we can start, but we got it verbally and a promise over an over of getting the paper...

Due to it starting to rain massively half way unloading the truck, we got no work done today at all except looking at the unloading of the Leca blocks.

Pictures from this day:

04 December 2006
Today we got more real work done. We cemented down the corners for the garage with the Leca blocks we got a few days ago, but again luck was not with us and the northwest corner block got moved out of it's location.
Which I didn't noticed till we started to set up the walls a couple of days or so later... :-( And then, it was to late to fix that block..

I also put down 3 more blocks out at the shed extension. 

Pictures to prove it... LOL:

03 December 2006
Today we got some real work done again... We had a delivery of one pallet of Leca blocks a few days ago, which turned out to be a huge mistake in many ways, both economical, and regarding the work related to the setting up of the garage walls.

This due to our understanding that Leca blocks are a fixed size, and all the pallets we have used later shows us that this first pallet hold blocks that where small then the ones we used since.
Which is a problem, as we built the length on the first wall based on the first blocks we put down - meaning so far we have had to adjust lengths of blocks thereafter, and the idea was not to have to do that...

But, now I'm skipping forward, let me show of the pictures related to this day first.

The day started with us putting some bends to a pipe carrying water from the house till this new extension to the shed so we can have cold & hot water out there too. :-)
We struggled so much to put them on, but no matter what we did, they would not fit together. So, in the end we just removed the rubber thingy inside to get them to fit together. So easy, why didn't we do this 2 hours ago...
Would have saved us a hell lot of frustration and work...

We where also able to put down the 15cm thick Leca blocks on their side that we needed to get the foundation for the tower at more or less the same height as the garage floor, and I've added some 15cm thick Leca blocks over at the shed extension in a double layer as we will have two different heights out there.
The cutting of one of the blocks for the tower took a long time due to lack of proper tools, but we manage in the end, and it seemed to be a perfect match too.
We got rain before we where through, then the rain stopped and it got dark instead - but this time we had a "secret weapon", we had bought two 500W lamps on a pole so I hooked that up and finished the job.