Garden coming on in leaps and bounds...

...but will it be finished before the end of the barbeque season?


The builder/landscape gardener has been working very hard! And he's had to, since it appears that the old owners simply covered the old garden with sand (pathing et al) and laid the "new" tiles straight on top of it! Since our garden requires a step down and some deep wall foundations to be laid, the old patio... and the old old garden all had to be removed. It took some 130 large plastic bags to remove all the old bricks and tiles that were concealed beneath the existing patio!


The laying of the tiles at the back of the garden, under the "veranda" is almost complete and as you can see from the picture above, we get some sun in the garden! It's this area where we plan to do our sitting and eating, but it now appears that Flo will be able to top up her tan; the gardeners report that the sun enters the garden here at approximately midday and remains until about 5pm. This will undoubtedly be the kitties (particularly Boris') favourite spot in the garden!


It turns out that the garden is slightly wider than anticipated (someone didn't measure it properly!) so the path running through the garden will be slightly wider than planned. As you can see form the pictures above, the low level walls are about finished and ready for plastering and painting.


Work has started on the remaining paving of the patio, which will be at a 35 degree angle to draw the eyes towards the flower beds and to make the garden feel a little wider. As you can see from the picture above, our builder/landscape gardener is not archetypical, since he sports a rather disappointing builder's crack. The other picture above is a detail of the step at the bottom of the garden and is especially for our garden designer... I hope it's to your high standards Harrie!?


Inside the house, the new, super-duper, all bells and whistles central heating and water boiler has been fitted. The building contractor ended up buying a high spec one with two independent boilers (one for the central heating and one for hot water, primarily to supply the rain shower at sufficient rate). Only problem is, it's a bit of a beast in terms of dimensions, so it's a bit bigger than the cupboard in which it's supposed to fit. So the cupboard now needs to be made a little deeper. Also, plastering has begun upstairs, as you can see from the picture above which is from the bathroom, with the fittings installed for the sink and wall lighting. Tiling of the bathroom should start by the end of this week (or early next week).


The majority of downstairs has now been plastered, as you can see from the pictures above. We can therefore start with the first coat of primer this weekend!

The kitchen was scheduled to be delivered this weekend also, but it turns out they need an extra week after the guys who are manufacting the end pieces made a mistake and therefore need to re-manufacture them. But this is fine, since the kitchen can't be installed until the floor has been finished, which probably won't be for another couple of weeks yet.

So things are moving along nicely and my confidence for being able to move in on September 1st is high... we might even have all the painting finished and the floors laid by then... but my main concern is whether or not we'll still be having the nice weather, since I'm desperately looking forward to that first barbeque in the garden!