Well that's another week gone and their still tiling the pool, tomorrow is the start of the fourth week, it all seems so labour intensive. I'm just glad we're on a fixed price and not day rate the cost even at local rates would be substantial as there are three of them most of the time.
The process after the gunite concrete was to render the pool with tile adhesive then scrape this back with the floats until smooth then tile the sides starting at the top with the border pushing the mosaic tile sheet back until the adhesive Ouse's through the gaps. on you go until you have done all the walls approximately 45 m2 . Then the good bit starts, scratching out all the now rock hard ouse'd out adhesive. Now I have no idea how many hundreds if not thousands of metres of joints there are but it took two guys a week !
You then have the pleasure of grouting and then repeating it all again on the 50 m2 of the floor. So as this process rolls into its fourth week, most of the tiles are on with just the steps to do.
The steps are seeming to be causing an issue for some reason, as the tile courses flow horizontally around the pool, when they cross the steps there is less then a complete tile on the face of the steps?
Being unwilling to cut a tile that's going to be 80cm under water there altering the rise of the steps to accommodate the full tile, so brick , render , adhesive skim , scrape , tile etc etc so that's another week I guess?
It's hard to believe that all pools are done this way , but we're certainly getting a quality job, I just hope there's a bit of the summer left to have a swim !
For the last week our DeeDee has been a bit off her food for some reason, she is still very active and looks happy but just not packing the biscuits away as before ?
The answer became apparent the other evening when she run passed us carrying a rabbit, it was resisting but the end was obvious, off in to the chumba and no amount of coaxing would work, eventually we flushed her out onto the rambla unfortunately too late for the rabbit who was missing it's back legs.
The lovely wife gathered up the rest and gave it a unceremonious internment in a carrier bag in the bins. DeeDee was not impressed. Today whilst we were altering one of the kitchen windows so it would open above the worktop height the lovely wife saw DeeDee burying something in a new pile of gravel for the path to the workshop, intrigued she went to dig it up, yes it was the front end of another rabbit.
We've had the first of our veg, I say veg it was actually a few radishes they were hot and crispy. The other items are looking good with just the chillies and tomatoes falling to the cold snap. The membrane and gravel is now in the court yard so we just need to move the tubs and shelves etc and put up the strainer wires so we can tie up in weeks to come. One thing is that we won't be short of bamboo canes as the rambla is lined with them. We should be in good shape for next season.
Now the pump and filter room is built I have been able to use up all the tiles left over from the new bathrooms on the walls. Some how we ended up with 15 m2 of extra tiles of all the same sort ? I'm pretty sure I haven't paid for them as we have sourced all the tiles and arranged delivery, so as these were about 10€ per metre plus IVA I would have noticed , I hope !
So I can only assume that they double loaded the pallet :-) , what ever its a posh pump room , just need the pump etc
There's not been a lot to laugh about this week, having received a letter from the Junta de Andalucia delivering a sanction for GRAVE tax offences,
Yer what ? A fine of 150€ for not submitting a tax return when buying the house ? After a visit to the lawyer ready to beat him to a pulp he was able to explain that within the ten pages were a few fundamental issues.
The postal address was ours as was the property registration details, the letter even acknowledged the receipt of 8500€ in tax ? This they definitely had as it was a bankers draft " thankfully "
The errors are that the named party for whom the sanction is issued is not me and the NIE is not mine. So he's in the process of getting them sorted out.
In my experience here is that even with a simple thing like a padron or car tax they won't take the money if any of the papers are missing or wrong choosing to turn you away, so you'd think that even thinking of sending such a letter would raise a flag to check the details. But no it's just another example of the Junta drones wasting the limited resources of Andalucia just plodding through the motions.
So overall an uneasy week but the jobs are getting ticked off .