Finished arches plus pastered walls

From the outside the house practically looks livable in now :-).



Suddenly the trees and forest look really close. This will be nice on hot summer days because they will help to keep the house and terrace cool. On other days I think we will wish that more light would reach the windows. One option is to prune some branches or chop some tops off. We will see. We don't need to decide right now.

Our main concern these days is what colour to paint the exterior walls. Carolina prefers white and it seems that 99% of this planet's speaking population agree with her. I would paint it the colour of my shirt. Since this changes every day (or sometimes every two days) I guess it's not that practical.

What colour would you choose? You have 48 hours to reply.

Completed roof, begin arches

With the roof largely completed the stress is off as far as worrying about rain slowing things down - if it rains then people can work on stuff that needs doing inside like flattening floors, plastering walls, kitchen bits and bobs.

I think this photo must have been taken at the end of a day's work, or maybe at the beginning. Either way it's impressive how tidy everything looks! More evidence that the constructor in charge of the project cares about what he's doing, which is really encouraging.





Everything has started to slow down a little bit, and yet lots of things are still happening. In the photo below left you can see the form / mold for the front archway. At the bottom the windows on the front wall of the house are being moved a few inches to the left so that from the inside they appear centered.

I always find it hard to know how much to worry about small details. It has never been so clear to me that I will have to live with mistakes for the rest of my life!


Having said that, we are really happy with the way the arches are taking shape. There was a lot of discussion about whether I would hit my head as I walked through and would have to duck (or grouse?) but thankfully (as I predicted with carefully worked out trigonometric calculations) there is more than enough space for me and my big head.

Mateo, car, house

Another gratuitous baby photo, or is that an oxymoron? It's also not ordered chronologically, which is a sin.

Preparing the walls for plastering

 
First they kind of splattered the concrete block walls with some kind of cement mix. Next, Luis (in photo) climbed up on this dodgy looking scaffolding and put another thin layer of cement mortar type stuff all round the house. I think the idea is that the plaster has something rough to stick to.

Btw, the thing Luis is kneeling on looks like a pretty good design for a workbench, doesn't it?

Roofing materials - ceiling

This material (Fibrolit) is for the ceiling of the bedrooms - the lower layer of the roof. It is cement based, semi-waterproof and fairly expensive. There are alternatives for ceiling materials - wood is common - but these may be less waterproof and liable to discolor if the humidity / rain gets to it.