Anyway now we´re back and it´s back to work on all fronts.. The hostels are getting painted and fixed up, a few new appliances have been bought to replace lost or broken or missing things and the staff are all rested, happy and back into the routine.
So back to the house. We had a bit of a falling out with our builder about timekeeping, budgets and general lack of perfectionism so we took him off the job and hired a new, fresh, young builder who had done a few small jobs for us in the past and seemed like a decent bloke. We tested him on the rendering of the back wall, the bathroom and the patio to see what he was like and he seemed good. He sub-contracted a couple of guys to do the stuff he didnt have experience in and it all seemed great so we contracted him to render the rest of the house (we had to go with cement render rather than lime unfortunately because of the wonky walls and for lack of anyone who seems confident to do it well). Then the trouble started... quotes started coming in slightly more and more expensive and labour costs started being quoted as considerably more than the last stage so we started to get suspicious. Sure enough we were there when the materials arrived on Saturday and the receipt for what was ordered was considerably less than what we had been told. Also there were things missing. We confronted him about it and got a whole bunch of weird and wonderful excuses but the bottom line is we´d rather not contract him again after this stage is finished.
So far we have the walls for the first half of the house up, all the plumbing sorted out (as in pipes, not installations), the roof on and the rendering underway. The gutters are also on now so we are able to collect water. The filter and pump is not quite finished so there´s not really running water yet but we´re not far off.
The solar panels arrived in January and were installed a couple of days ago. We dont have the wiring done for the house yet but the guys who installed the panels were using drills and equipment off the system so it definately works which is very exciting! Hopefully we´ll get a couple of rooms wired up and we can start spending a bit of time out there.
The corn that we planted just before my last post is now about 1.50m tall and has little seed corns coming out of the top. I have no idea what we´ll do with 40 corn plants each one producing three cobs but I feel proud of having grown them at least! The hens will enjoy a few I´m sure.
The hens are doing well and the eggs are selling really well in the hostel, we cant keep up with demand sometimes! One of the hens has stopped laying and has gone all weird and broody, just sitting all day in her nest and forgetting to eat unless you kick her out once a day for some water and corn. We decided to let nature take its course and have borrowed a cockrel called Gerard from a friend. He´s having fun with the others and on sunday we have to start taking eggs out to put under broody Lucy so she can incubate them for three weeks. I worry that she might not be very good at this though as she has a very short attention span and the worst thing would be if she gets fed up half way through and gets up, leaving behind half formed chicks! I´m already having nightmares about it!
The other wildlife at the house seems to be doing well. We have a mouse living in the garage and the weeds are growing out of control. I cant even find the coffee plants and mandarina trees under the grass and ferns! Everything has been a bit neglected of late. Tony has spent a couple of afternoons up there this week digging and flattening the area where the hens used to live so that we can plant some grass so that´ll look nice when it´s done and then we have a strimmer which should arrive any day now so that´ll sort out the jungle in an afternoon. He also dug a couple of drainage channels to stop the rain water washing away the grass we planted by the house and it seems to be working pretty well.
As far as the building goes, the next stage will be to install a loo and some kitchen type things so that we can maybe spend weekends up there. I hope it´ll be at that stage by Easter partly because living in the hostel is getting a bit old now and also because of the crazy Easter celebrations in Popayan, it´d be good to be able to rent our room in the hostel for that week. So that´s the goal. We´ll see how it goes.
