Renovations

The house is coming along quite nicely. The amount of work on the ground floor turned out to be at least double what we expected but most of it's done now. The decorator is starting on monday and then the floors will be polished and varnished so we're looking at 2-3 weeks absolute maximum and we'll be back living at home.

The 2 floors above are also receiving the full treatment. The beams between the ground and 1st floors have been checked and only one needs replacing. The rest have been treated with anti-termite varnish.

In order to reduce the noise and footstep levels between floors, we're putting in a 'light cement'. This is a cement floor of about 5cm thick mixed with polystyrene pellets. We've put in glass wool as a first layer of insulation, then OSB (compressed, structural plaques of wood) is laid on top of the beams. Plastic sheeting is put down as waterproofing, on top of that goes chicken wire and then the light cement. Once that's dry, the original wood floors will go back in place. This should sound proof every floor and also help a lot with heat insulation.

Here's the first floor-you can see the glass wool in place. You can also see the new termite proof pine that was put in place in order to level the floor (after the house slipped down the hill due to earthquakes). There's about a 12cm difference in the middle of the floor.



Here's the same floor with the OSB nailed down. The next room along will be getting the same treatment. The timber beams and struts in between the two rooms is all newly built as the old oak was in a bit of a state



The underground part of the ground floor is coming along nicely.



And finally...another sunset in Reñaca