My partner currently has 4 weeks holidays so this down time between jobs has occurred at a really good time. It means I can be here to give her a hand with some of her house renovation tasks as well as to go out and about for walks in the forest and soak up some of this wonderful, warm, spring sunshine.
This week I have been out at Heppenheim at Bettina’s parents house for 3 days. They are having the front of the house remodeled to incorporate a 3-story staircase that will run from the upstairs apartment down to the basement swimming pool. As most of the construction is going to take place over the existing front garden, all of the flowers, trees and shrubs that they wanted to be saved had to be dug up and replanted in the back garden. On top of this they wanted to save as much of the topsoil as possible given that good soil is very expensive here and what they do have, has taken over 30 years to build up with composting. You may recall from an earlier post that the entire region here is part of the Rhine River Valley and most of the soils have a very high sand content. As a result I ended up digging up some 20sq meters of garden beds and lawn and transporting the "mutter erde" or mother earth into long piles along the fence, away from the building site. We also had to locate the power and water lines for the excavator operator which meant digging a trench some 1.5 meters deep from the house out towards the front gate.
The front pathway from the gate to the front door at the house was paved with granite slabs set in steel reinforced concrete. All of these had to be taken up, numbered and stacked so that they can be re-laid later on as a new patio area. This was one occasion where German engineering was not so overwhelmingly appreciated. It took both of us more than a day to angle grind and hammer drill the 54 slabs off. I could not believe the construction of this path and I have no doubt that, if left alone, would still be in faultless form some 2000 years from now. Heavy-duty stuff. The retired old boy who made the path and front fence in 1970 was a master stone mason who apparently had an arrangement with the local undertakers to collect the granite off cuts produced from the making of tomb stones and crypts, he then used these to build stone walls and pathways. In some ways it all seemed perversely laughable as not only did I discover about 100 muscles that I didn’t know existed until the next day but it left me feeling that I may have to order my own slab of granite for a tombstone. I am still recovering from the ordeal as I write. What a job!
The steel mesh and concrete slab underneath the path was around 40cm thick in places. This had to be cut through at both ends so that when the excavator came to rip it up the steel mesh would not pull at the stone fence or house entry foundations. Talk about totally over the top engineering. At any rate the area is now ready for the builders to move in later this week. Side benefits of the job included getting to try out Alfred’s new sauna after work, drinking his beer and consuming large quantities of Margarite’s traditional German home cooking 3 times a day. Piggy, piggy. To sum up the week I find myself sore as hell and somewhat fatter.
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