irons in the fire

    We've now got ourselves a fine list of jobs. The rough landscaping that had developed over the last 9 years has been uprooted to make way for our waterproofing project. The trenching and finishing touches will require the design and construction of a new outdoor stairway connecting our terraces. The stairway will require a strong retaining wall to keep the upper terrace where it belongs. The bottom of the stair will require a final plan for the old rainwater cistern which sits right where the stair will land. On the north corner we are rebuilding our drains and footing a low retaining wall to outline our little corner patio. And finally, all that soil will have to find a final resting place somewhere, before we can claim our downstairs, main patio back.

    You'd think we'd be eager to get all this over with before the busy spring season begins, but actually we've taken a pause from working outdoors (european weather is horrible this season) and decided to begin constructing two new bathrooms, one on top of the other in the stairwell. This, of course, leads to a final design decision on our underfloor heating of the top floor which requires tearing up the old floors up there to make way for the pipe runs. The trouble is these rooms have been lived in for the last 9 years and have accumulated a LOT of stuff. All that stuff has to be moved either out to the garbage bins or up into the attic and that's what we've been doing.
    It's been a busy couple of weeks. (months? years?)