19th May

There have been some delays, but we're making progress. The pictures below show where we were up to last Thursday. On Friday it was raining, and so all that was done was filling the base of the wall with foam after cleaning out the drops of cement, and the preparation of steel to embed into the wall when it gets filled with concrete.

After the finish of the general excavation to grade.

Then these trenches were dug to take the concrete that will be the piers.

  

 

Ready for pouring the base concrete...

...and the afternoon of the pour...

After a day of hardening off...

The blocks are going in here for the retaining wall that forms the back wall of the house.

...all this space will be backfilled once the wall has been filled with concrete. When it is, it has to set for a week. The back of it is sealed to make it waterproof, it's lined with a protective layer of plastic that is designed to prevent the rocks and stones from piercing the waterproof membrane.

This is the first step of the spiral staircase. It's in 18mm marine ply. There will be 16 steps all up.