Week 53: 26 June - 2 July

Jun. 29, 2023

Well, we slowwwwwwly make progress. This week, all of the work that is happening is outside in the backyard and in the basement. The basement work is holding up in the installation of the heater which is needed to do some final drying out of the concrete floors. We were there this morning to meet with the garage door company and when we got there at 8:00, the electrician was already hard at work. His estimate is that worst case, he will finish the electrical work in the basement by next Friday.

As I mentioned, we also met with the garage door guy - he needed to measure the doorway for the space under the front stairs. We’ll get that made to match the existing garage and side doors. It will take about 3 months since it is custom made but that’s fine. We have nothing to store in there for now anyway.

Garage

The electrician has prepped for the electrical work by painting around all of the electrical switches and sockets. When we arrived this morning, the electrician had already started, as you can see in this photo below.

The top left switch is for the garage door opener and the right two are for lights.

In the back of the garage, we’ll have some sort of “industrial” type lighting that’s easy to clean and bright for working in the garage.

The area for the workbench is just waiting for outlet covers.

Backyard

There has been some more leveling out in the backyard and the first terrace has its waterproof lining.

The dirt has been filled in.

This is our rainwater retention tank. It’s enormous and 9 cubic meters. It should be installed today or tomorrow.

The rainwater retention tank will go in this rough area behind the house. It will be closer to the house so that we can have a driveway of sorts to the side of the house which we couldn’t have if the tank was there.

Out and About

Two village over from ours (5km away) there’s a tiny fish farm. The selection varies but they usually have, at a minimum some kind of trout. We decided to get some for lunch today. They had rainbow trout today and so we got two.

When we got there, they pulled them out of a tank (still swimming), stunned them, killed them and then gutted them for us. The two fish cost about $8 (total).

Today, they also had carp and sturgeon available.

There was a very fierce guard dog who made sure we didn’t steal any fish. Not really…he was very sweet and far more interested in his VERY LARGE (what we assume to be cow) bone.

The fish are bagged and ready to go.

And finally, a very tasty end product. Trout on the grill with lemon, onions and rosemary.