Think I have written about all topics mentioned in title already?
You are right, I indeed have, see: Digging a trench around existing foundation, Stone Wall Concreting. But that's just for the other part of house, now we are mowing to other side and repeating most of the works we did on opposite side - we will remove old log walls and replace them with aac blocks, but before that there is still some need to perform preparation works.
So what about falling through the ceiling? Yes, indeed, this was one of the scariest days in my life as for the second, while removing some boards from loft, I accidently put my foot, where I knew I shouldn't, at one part of house, there were just a fake ceiling made from cardboard. Once I accidentally stepped on it, it went all dark along my eyes and for that short milliseconds I was failing, I made a lot of thinking, what I was thinking about? Not to broke anything and how to re-group my body to fall safely. It's just wonders what our mind can do to us in critical moments, I indeed regrouped my body and landed safely without any trauma or something just some scratch on hands and legs and a huge startle.
Ceiling through which I fell out
I landed safely not hitting that large canister or any other traumatic element down there. I landed perfectly not hitting anything. The total height here, not so high after all, maybe just some 2 meters.
I believe in mystic things, my life have taught to believe. After this fall out, I started to think something bad is happening somewhere else, with somebody probably, with somebody close to me. I called all my relatives and asked is everything is fine, when my mom told, that a sister of my grandfather is being buried today (I never had chance to know here) - and I understood, this fall was related to my distant relative, probably she was angry I haven't remembered her or something.
Think I'm joking? I'm not! Last time when I almost got hit by a car in Tbilisi while ridding a bicycle my dear uncle (brother of my grandmother died). I take things like this seriously. Later in evening we lighted some candles and paid respect to deceased one.
Anyway home remodeling is a tough one, probably not meant for everyone, a year ago my brother almost fall of from the roof, while taking chimney down. See: Replacing Roof - Part 3: Removing the old roofing (Losing Chimney)
Gosh, sounds like some cursed house we have, which is not true actually. Yes, there are some formations probably living in house ( the house is more than 120 years old), but here is the thing I did in Spring when we left Tbilisi - I took our Georgian home spirit and we traveled together to this house - I introduced the old spirits with the new Georgian guy, and Georgian spirit did the trick. We are safe and blessed. Gaumarjos and Didi Madloba!
Now back to the remodeling stuff:
Preparing stone wall for concreting
We will need to install bearing beams here and we will need to fix old and ruined wall. I had a great assistant, a hired worker, who did most of the work, I just photographed and prepared mortar.
Digging a trench around existing foundation
Now, this was a total disaster, it turned out that there is no foundation at all, just rubble in two rows above ground. And I thought a tragedy is just a missing foundation. No - a tragedy is no foundation at all.
Work scene
At this stage we started our prays again, praying that the corner without foundation wouldn't just fall as I did in the morning, as we still had to dig a trench and start pouring in concrete.
Stone wall concreted
At least we managed to concrete this stone wall. With a concrete mixer it's actually pretty easy work to do.
The loft
See how we took a chimney down here, earlier this Summer.
So what we are building here? We are building an auxiliary room to store water pumps and stuff like that, it's planned that there will be a nice entrance to the bath, but that's a story for another year.