The First Floor is Laid

Last Thursday the concrete for the first floor was delivered. The long arm stretched over the house (one of the benefits of having no roof) and the liquid was pumped in as the builders smoothed it out with great paddles.

We were going to have concrete filled with polystyrene granules to make the first floor lighter, but the builders decided our fragile cottage needed more structural support. So the walls and beams were overlaid with reinforcing rods and eight cubic meters of "normal" concrete were poured onto the floor and into the walls. That's nearly 12 tons. The downstairs beams will need support to hold the weight for the next three weeks while it cures. And only afterwards will the roof go on.

So now progress can be made on the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. The walls are going up and the windows in the back wall are being knocked through.

To make it easier for the builders to carry up the heavy stones and bricks, they've erected a temporary staircase, made from one we had lying around in the loft. When we first moved into our house, the staircase (a way into the attic) was in a corridor behind the kitchen. But the staircase wasn't needed. We could get into the attic through the gîte/studio/whatever and the corridor could become a useful utility room. So that first summer, Eric, Matthew and Tod hauled it out the way, up into the attic.

We'd been wondering how on earth we were ever going to get the staircase out again. Good to see it disappearing down to the cottage slung between two builders.