Entrance Improvements

We've been improving the entrance to the house a little. Up till now, it's looked pretty much like a building site. Now it looks like a building site with some pretty touches...

First we laid a large quadrant of granite at the bottom of the steps. Cut granite is relatively easy (and cheap) to come by here. Then we put down a concrete slab in front of the ground floor door -- first digging down deep and putting in a waterproof membrane against the house to prevent water seeping into what will eventually be our bedroom. The gravel top layer is temporary; in the end we'll probably lay some nice Portuguese-style paving stone over the whole area.

Mixing concrete; not Meg's favourite job (nor mine), but satisfying in its own way!

While we had some men in to extend the chimney upwards (don't ask; I might write about chimney design sometime...), I built a small porch roof. Sounds easy -- but it took me a while to get my tiling methods down, so this was quite a few weeks in the making. I'll post a 'finished' photo later...