Day 518: Plaster in the basement

We started to plaster the basement walls. Since we used reclaimed bricks, I wanted to expose them to tell their story. These bricks have lived previous lives in previous structures all around Pretoria. Therefore, I only plastered a frame around the bricks and left the remaining bricks raw and emphasized.

Day 517: Progress report

Day 514: Preparing the roof structure

A steel roof structure needs to be installed to carry the final sheet metal roofing. In order to prevent the structure from rusting the steel is treated with red oxide primer prior to installation.  

Day 511: Installing concrete steps

Installing the concrete steps turned out to be a nearly impossible task. Firstly the steps needed to be grinded down into exactly the correct size to fit into the space allocated.  A pulley system was then used to hoist the steps up one by one using a nylon strap to hold them in mid-air. Then the steps were carefully laid down onto the steel brackets the engineer designed to fix the steps to the walls. They installed approximately two steps a day bit it was worth the effort.

Day 510: The final concrete casting - roof slab

Day 509: The morning before casting concrete

The site is in chaos and everybody, including my mother, brother and little sister, is assisting to get everything ready before the concrete arrives.

Day 508: Decking and steel reinforcement for the roof slab

Day 505: How to get to the roof of a 3 storey house?

Day 504: Epoxy starter bars

Steel reinforcing starter bars had to be installed to structurally connect the concrete walls with the roof slab. Holes were drilled into the walls and the steel bars were fixed with epoxy.

Day 503: Step by step update

I apologise for being absent for a while. I had the privilege of visiting Ghana and seeing the site for a house I am designing.

In South Africa however, the site did not lay idle while I was away and now I have plenty to share.  I am going to do a number of posts over the next few days to bring you up to date.

Firstly, we had to build a brick wall on the first floor.