Manuel has assumed the role of project manager, which suits us down to the ground. He is liasing with the carpenter, looking for painters, dealing with the plumber etc. This is obviously a whole lot better than us trying to do this, and while Ian’s Spanish is getting very good, it would be still difficult to ring up someone and organize things. We can do it face to face – but phones are difficult. Manuel also has exceedingly high standards, and we know that he won’t let anything pass that is not perfect.
He’s been too-ing and fro-ing with the carpenter as he has not been happy with the proportions of the internal doors. You’ll see in the picture below what the solution is. Our new internal doors that lead onto the hallway are the same hight as the internal internal doors, ie doors from bedroom to living room. They have been shortened by about 1 foot (they are still not ‘short’ the new doors are 7 foot, the old ones were 7 11″). This was largely to save money, however Manuel has been unhappy because they are shorter than the back door and over the weeks they’ve been worrying him more and more. Anyway, he turned up at our living room door one night last week delighted that he’d found a solution, and that is to put a glass panel above the doors to keep the hight but with the slightly shorter doors. This keeps the proportions. We kicked ourselves a bit as this was such a good idea and one that we could have come up with if we had thought about it. One thing about the house is when you shut the bedroom doors you are plunged into a black hole. The glass panels will reduce the feeling of being in a cave.
And what a great opportunity for stained glass or glass etching. We’re both coming up with ideas now. I’m thinking about stained glass to mimic the pattern on the hallway tiles and Ian is thinking about sandblasting a pattern. Watch this space….
Having said we were drawing a line under the building work when this little lot was complete, we have decided to go ahead with the new drain under the house. It will obviously be a messy job and it makes sense to get it all over and done with. We’re also thinking about getting all of the plaster off the front of the house rather than getting it patched. This will be more expensive, but might patching it be a false economy if we are going to have to get it redone in the future – oh, I don’t know!
Our latest list of addons will take us to the absolute limit BUT we feel that it is money well spent. We feel that we are getting very good value for money – I don’t think we would have extended the project as we have done if had any concerns. This week he will be working on the new kitchen and the plumber will be coming to plumb everything in, which means that the new main bathroom and the pink bathroom will be functional – wahoo!
One last thing – I’ve changed the way that I post photos to the blog. It is quicker for me doing it this way as I am using an automated process via Flickr, but there is just one picture per blog post so it might be more difficult to read. If there are any probs, let me know and I’ll go back to the old way.