Day 10 (revised) - 4 more courses today

Just as expected, the brick courses are now flying up. Four more appeared today taking the outside walls up to half way up the windows. At least we can see where they are now! Not that many and quite small as is the norm here. If these holes are for the typical concrete frame and window assembly which is just dropped in before the courses go much higher, then the actual windows will be really small.

And also as I predicted, the bricks appear to be glued together. What a clever little bricodog I am.

You can also now get a feel for the layout of the house and I must say it is not very big. My guess is two bedrooms but we will see for sure when the internal walls go up.

More tomorrow night. At this rate the roof will be on next week and they will be moving in by Halloween - NOT! Let us not forget this is a French build and once the shell is up and the roof is on all progress is likely to cease for at least three months. I have no idea why but that is what usually happens!

We're off - again.

I must say that my hopes were raised when, on my walk this morning, I saw two of the building company's vehicles headed down the hill towards the site. Sure enough, when I went round there this evening, to my delight I found that the first course of bricks had gone down. Definitely a sign that work has really started again. Hopefully the next courses will go down in much quicker time.

No disappointment that only the first course had gone down as I assume that this must take some time in order that it is straight, level, square, and to the correct dimensions. Looks pretty good so far as I could see except perhaps in the straightness area, but this is France where these things tend to matter less.

Bricks have gone down on cement but I think possibly subsequent courses may be glued, although I am no expert. However, this builder did use the gluing technique on his office and his house.

Also solved was the mystery of the rectangular area at the back left of the house. This now seems to be a sort of verandah with double doors leading out to it from what is presumably the lounge. The rebar bits sticking up will be for pillars to support the roof of the verandah, or possibly the house roof will go out that far.

And as you can see me noticing, the front door is set back in a sort of porch.

Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Work begins - but just warming up

As expected, there was some work on site today - the first for 4 weeks - but not that much. In fact all they managed was to remove the wooden formwork around the concrete base.

However, given that they have been on leave for 4 weeks, I guess they are just limbering up before going full steam ahead. Well, one can but hope! More as and when it happens.

Yipee! - signs that they are back soon

So, the typical four weeks of inactivity are now over and there are hopeful signs that work will be resumed shortly. Today many palette loads of terracotta bricks were delivered to site, presumably to start building the walls.

They look like the type of brick that is usually glued together so they should go up very quickly. I saw the boss of the company there the other day so he is presumably getting ready to restart the work on site. Will keep you posted.

Yup! They are on hols.

It was, I am afraid, much as I expected. The frantic rush to get the base finished was, it seems, a case of "let's get this base finished quick before we go on our hols". As a result, don't expect any more activity until around the third week in August. So the blog will go quiet until activity starts again at which point the clock will be reset to Day 8 (these being working days).

So your local bricodog reporter is signing off until the action restarts. Until then, have fun.

Day 10 - still nothing

Very much as expected there is still no action on site whilst the concrete base is curing.  Don't really expect anything until next week - that is if they are not all on holiday.

Never mind - my dad has been busy modifying new shutters after he and I took the most humungous trailer load of crap to the dump.

As expected, no new work.

Well, I did not think there would be any work today and sure enough there was not. However, what I did see was that the newly poured concrete was now cracking (at least on the surface) all over.

Given the July/August temperatures of 28 to 30 degrees over the last few days, maybe they should have covered it. Still, what do I know as a mere dog - maybe this happens all the time.

A few words about this blog. I started it just over a week ago to keep Rob, a UK builder mate who had just been over with us on holiday, in touch with the build he saw as it started. I never expected it to do anything else. Imagine my surprise when, at the end of the first week, I find it has had 40 hits from the UK, France, Germany and Russia! And even an intelligent comment from one of its readers. The strange and bizarre world of blogging.