DEVELOPMENTS

So, they have been here and marked the corners of our house.  It is funny to see where our house is actually going to be and thing that maybe next year this time of year, there will be a house there not just sticks.  I took Vasilis down there to show him where his room was going to be.  He was not happy at all, because he discovered that we were going to put the house where his tree house is and that the treehouse would have to.  He was pretty upset.  I asked him if he would rather have the treehouse instead of a brand new room and he told me yes and walked away.  Oh, well.  He will change his mind...

This small hill will have to be removed.  So does the treehouse in the background.  Can you spot the orange sticks?

The view from the living-room / kitchen..

The view from the guestroom

Proof of altitude

STEP TWO

I had been looking forward to the weekend all week.  The rest of the bee-house had to go.  After all we were expecting the contractor to be here on Thursday and we wanted the property to be as clean as possible so he could tell us the perfect location for the house.
The bad thing was: Yannis had been sick all week.  Fever, cough, aches, short of breath.  And he was not feeling well on Saturday either.  So I woke up, took the sledgehammer and went down there to see what I would be able to do by myself.  Yannis of course, being as excited as I was to get rid of the thing, told me he would go get the chainsaw to help the process along.
90 minutes later, Yannis was still getting the chainsaw and I had managed to demolish one entire corner of the house.  The house was literally on three legs, but still standing.  I was in doubt though, how to proceed, I didn't want the house to end up on top of me, so I went to get Yannis for him to come up with a plan.

The three-legged house

His plan was to do it the greek way: to push it over.  By hand.  So we pushed.  And pushed.  Yannis was in panic (he was scared it would fall on top of me, or him or Tommy. Or all three of us), he could not breathe and I felt as if we were both giving birth.  We were really pushing.  The house was swaying but nothing really happened.  For a long time.  Until it decided to sit. It didn't fall, it didn't make a loud sound.  It gently sat down.

Thankfully Kristian came visiting, so he was able to help us take the rest apart.  We worked from 11:00 until 19:00 on Saturday. There was nothing left of it by the end of the day.  Just the roof, which we nicely stacked for it to be thrown away later.  The rest we burned.

So it sat down...

The house is on fire!

The good helper I

The good helper II

Gone!

This is a part of the original stone-fence that used to mark where our property ends and the neighbors begin.  We are planning to rebuild parts of it.  It is going to look lovely!

So we dream on about the house....

PREPARATIONS

For the ones that thought I would blog in Greek: I am sorry. My Greek is advanced enough to get me by in Halkida, but not good enough to blog with.  Come to think of it, my English might not be good enough either, but who cares? Google translate!
So, we have stated to clear the property.  We thought for a while we might be able to save the bee house and I had a vision of it being part of our fantastic outdoor kitchen but it had to go. The supporting beams were completely eaten by ants. No wonder.  They must have been there for at least a hundred years.  We have a dream though, that we might be able to reconstruct it in the future.

Before.....

So we went at it with a sledgehammer (which I managed to jam into my legs several times) and a crowbar (I stabbed myself in the stomach with it).  I must say, being such an old building I was surprised how difficult it was to take down.  It put up a good fight, but at the end of the day only the skeleton was left of it.  This weekend we're tearing down the rest.  I think Yannis might have to take out his favorite tool, the chainsaw, for the final deconstruction.

The demolition man

My parents used to arrange huge garden parties in the seventies.  This "sign" reads "Dancefloor"

After....