The ground floor is definitely taking shape; the structure for the second floor is mostly up, and most of the floor in the kids’ lofts is also in place. The house is now clearly visible from across the bridge, as one approaches from the other side of the valley.

The ground floor is a hive of activity as floors and inner walls are being constructed. The guys are three weeks behind schedule due to holidays and rain, but are working hard to make up for lost time. Maybe they’re working too fast, I thought, when I noticed that the wall of the bathroom near the ground floor guest room was lacking a door. They simply forgot it, and now they have to knock down some brand new concrete hollow blocks.

The plumbing is also coming up, as is some of the electricals. Unfortunately, the architect is a little behind on updating some of the drawings. The plumbers and electricians are following the latest drawings they have, but are forced to rip up a little here and there as we notice things that weren’t quite right. The maids’ bathroom lacked a shower head, for example, so we had to move the toilet to make space for it.

A few weeks ago I received some bad news: since the basement is significantly below street level, and since the village’s sewage pipes run along and just below the street, we cannot connect our sewage pipes directly to the village pipes. We need to have our rain water and our sewage run down into underground tanks underneath the basement, then have it pumped back up again using large pumps in the bottom of the tanks.

A big hole was dug in the basement and two large concrete tanks were constructed. One tank will temporarily hold rain water, the other sewage. Both tanks will have manholes for maintenance purposes – one hidden under the staircase and one in the floor of the laundry area. I hate to think what we need to do if and when the pumps break down…

The project engineer and the electrician have also been busy sticking orange pipes in the forms for the concrete beams all over the house, before the concrete was poured. It looks like a lot of pipe, but since we have not yet finalized the design of the auxiliary electrical system we need all the flexibility we can get.

The pipes will be used to later draw cable for power, audio, video, LAN, etc, from one area of the house to another, through the beams.