Week...Holy Crap, HOW Many Weeks Are There In A Year??

Well, I know it's been a few weeks since I've posted anything to the construction blog, but those weeks have been busy with a lot of other things, most of which weren't related to the construction. Plus, the house is still going fairly slowly. Actually, it's not that slow, but it's hard to see big changes like you could at the beginning of the construction. As a result, I'll probably continue to put up pictures every few weeks, but not every week. So, here are some new pictures:

All of the walls were completely finished in terms of forming them and covering them with a layer of cement, so the next step was to cover them in a sort of paste to help protect them and let the paint adhere better. I don't know what this would be called in English, but they call it "Repemax" here. Anyhow, here's Freddy mixing some Repemax.

Here Harvey is putting on some Repemax. This picture is looking from inside the TV room to the garage. In other words, the TV room doesn't have to coolest view in the house.

Once again, here is this weird tree branch that Honorio and I planted. Sure enough, that thing's sticking, and a few weeks ago it started putting out buds. Now they're leaves. Within a month or two, I'm expecting a new-growth forest in the backyard.

Here you can see the window frames with Repemax (above) and without (below). We're hoping to get the actual windows put in as soon as possible.

Another with/without picture: Here are the fixtures and drainages for the washer, dryer, and sink in the garage. We were going to have a laundry room in the middle of the house, but it's now a TV room. Or a guest room. So come visit us!

Harvey (above) and Oscar connect some tubing to feed water to the solar panels we installed for hot water.

The solar panel guy with his son, installing the panel.

August 9, 2008.

Moving the panel. Denting the roof. All in a day's work.

August 10, 2008: With the finished solar panel.

As you can maybe imagine, this is the first prominent solar panel like this in Berlin. As a result, the regular load of bored hicks stopping by the property to rubberneck has boomed. Since most of them have no idea what that thing on the roof is, though, we've been considering saying it's an anti-theft bomb that senses when someone's stealing from the house, and destroys everything in a three-block radius.

Either that, or we'll say it's a UFO that we found in Angela's family's coffee field.

Anyhow, hope you liked the pictures. I'll try to get some more up soon!

Week Seventeen

Here are some pictures from the last week. Hope you enjoy them!

July 16, 2008. These guys are attaching a sort of runner that covers the seams in the roof.

Demonstration of how they level the floor. Using the cement guides on the ground, they use a big piece of metal (by now covered in cement, too) to make things straight and even.

July 18, 2008: Angela giving orders.

The poured floors in the living room (foreground) and kitchen / dining room (back). To the right there'll be a step down from the entry hall.

Another view of the living room.

The laundry room, which we converted into a TV room. We just decided we'll do laundry in the garage.

A lot of tubes and pipes in our bathroom.

This looks a lot more complicated than it may be. It's basically all the tubes and wiring for electricity, telephone, and cable, if they ever have cable in Berlín. If not, it'll just have a regular antenna.

We've started looking at sinks and stuff.

Some toilets.

Angela with a basin she liked.

We're gonna have a bathtub, so we're hoping to get something like this.

So, that's it for this week. Keep tuned for more pictures, coming soon!

Week Sixteen

Here are some pictures from week sixteen. I hope that we don't get to the 19th week, because I'm not sure how to spell that...

July 8, 2008.

July 13, 2008. Roof done, thank God.

Windows would be creepier if they all looked like this.

The front bedroom, demonstrating how they pour and level the cement. After laying out some string to make a flat surface, they pour these concrete guides. That's the level that the floor will come to. Underneath is the iron curtain, if you will, which is just a steel reinforcement for the poured concrete.

OK, I have to admit that I was definitely skeptical when my father-in-law Honorio and I planted sticks in the ground (see Week Ten). But sure enough, the damn things started to sprout like crazy, and seemingly out of nowhere! Now they're covered in these little spines, which will presumably become branches.
So, I'll get you some more pictures next week. Thanks for looking!