I am really starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now. It may not look it from the photos but I have had a really productive couple of weeks. Where shall I start…

Well I have finally finished running all the electrical wiring over the whole house – the amount of wire I used was a bit of a shock but it is done now and I have to say I did not enjoy doing it that much. Having to dig in the walls was tired and dirty work – a lot of people said to me why dont I just run wires outside on the walls but I hate the look of houses with external wiring and while I was doing the walls anyway it seemed stupid not to run them in the walls.

I am sure I have made a few mistakes in there somewhere but I will find them when I start testing the circuits. I have used a 200amp main panel, a 125amp sub panel for upstairs and to 40 amp junction boxes at either end in the garden. I forget the size of the place sometimes as I have had to buy and install over 300 wall outlets/switch boxes. I did go a little crazy putting outlets everywhere but it is better to have to many than to little… right?

The guys have been working really hard with the walls – I can tell they are fed up with it – it makes it worse have to bring all the materials upstairs so hopefully it will be easier downstairs. They have done a really good job upstairs and have just finished it today, well I say finished… I haven’t completed the plumbing yet so I have 4 bathrooms and a kitchen left to plaster up there but its 80% completed.

The amount of windows, doors and details in each room is really time consuming and it gets frustrating at times with the apparent lack of progress – but when that happens I just look back at my last blog post and see the progress since my last post and the frustration goes away.

My big goal over the next month is to actually move in – might seem like a crazy thought looking at the photos but once the walls and plumbing are complete downstairs its doors, floors and decorate and our home is ready. It will save me a fortune in gas and time going back and forward each day as gas seems to be going up in price everyday here at the moment.

One of the jobs that has popped up is the rear balcony – I kind of put it to the back of my mind and though I would just deal with it at the end but it became apparent that I need to do something with it before they plaster downstairs. It looks in a bad state but the supports are safe, although they are not level. They are made from concrete with metal bar so are really strong but I want to build a little roof overhanging the balcony – although it will not be heavy I am unsure about adding any extra weight to it.

So the plan is to use the old roof beams as pillars to hold and level the balcony and continue those pillars up to the overhang roof. I was a little unsure about how this would look at first but I liked the look of the pillars supporting the roof on the pool house so I thought why not give it a go.

The other option is to build concrete pillars to hold it all up but I like the idea of using the old roof beams as look awesome and best of all they are free! Being as the base of the pillars is where the plumbing will be run I will start digging it up and putting up the pillars at the same time.

I am working 6 days a week, around 10 hours a day at the moment – I am not complaining as I love it but it sure does get you tired. I try and get away every Sunday to do something different – this weekend it was a friends beach house in Azua – just thought I would add this photo in as I had a great day off.

So whilst the guys have the plastering downstairs to keep them busy for at least another month I can move on to my next task. The plumbing! I am really looking forward to it as I got so bored of running wires.