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Frans
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# Posted: 4 Mar 2016 01:13am
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The brick makers took a long break and returned a week ago to finish the kiln. Yesterday afternoon they started the fire. There is about 3½ tons of coal in the bricks and the kiln. It will burn for 2-3 weeks and then cool down for a week or two before we can unpack. I am in such a hurry to get the bricks out. I have a brick water reservoir that my grandfather built in 1965. One morning we found the wall has exploded.
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Frans
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# Posted: 4 Mar 2016 01:15am
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So here is the burning kiln:
Building the kiln
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Firing up the kiln
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Frans
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# Posted: 4 Mar 2016 01:47am
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I want to share this picture. We found it in the mountains. The old people called it a wolf cage from the 1800's. It had a stone trap door and they set it to catch "wolfs". Now we don't have wolfs in Africa. I believe it must have been brown hyenas or wild dogs.
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Frans
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# Posted: 7 Nov 2017 04:39am
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Hello all you good people. It has been a long time since I reported here, and things were a bit hectic. I have not yet started on the restoration of the old house, because I had a contractor who wanted to lease it for his workers, so the restoration was placed on hold for a while.
I can however report on another restoration project: My old farm house and cabin.
My father bought the farm Spitzkop around 1956 and all our children grew up there. Around 1990 he moved to another farm with a better house and the old farm house was abandoned and fell into total disrepair. Vandals broke each and every window and nature took its tole on the old raw brick and mud walls where the plaster came off.
I inherited the farm when my father passed away a few years ago and a couple of months ago it was registered in my name. Then I found a couple who was looking for a place to stay and plant some vegetables and we jumped in and started restoration of the cabin.
Here are some before pictures:
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Frans
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# Posted: 7 Nov 2017 04:43am
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Vandals broke all the windows and the old wooden frames were just rotting away.
The old farm house
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The cabin front
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Cabin side
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Frans
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# Posted: 7 Nov 2017 04:47am
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And there is also a "longdrop" toilet.
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Frans
Member
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# Posted: 7 Nov 2017 05:46am
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The cabin initially was the old slaughter room and "separator room" where the milk separator was standing. In the late 1970's my father added two small rooms, one for a toilet and one for a bathroom and changed it to a sleeping cabin for me and my brother.
Around 1987 my father wanted to extend the cabin into a flat for my grandparents and he added another room, but before he could finish it my grandpa passed away and the extension never got a roof.
The wooden window frames were destroyed and rotten away, so I decided to replace it with steel frames.
We changed the old bathroom into a kitchen and changed the old toilet by adding a shower.
Then we patched up the plaster and white washed the walls outside and inside.
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Frans
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# Posted: 7 Nov 2017 05:51am
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New windows:
Steel window frames
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White wash
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Frans
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# Posted: 7 Nov 2017 06:02am
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So my friend and his wife moved into the cabin. He installed a solar power system and he built a hot water "donkey" with a 210 liter steel barrel.
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Frans
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# Posted: 7 Nov 2017 06:04am
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This is the unfinished cabin extension. One day I will take it on as a project on its own.
Unfinished cabin extension
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bldginsp
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# Posted: 8 Nov 2017 09:41pm
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Glad you posted again Frans. I enjoy seeing things from the other side of the world, where things are done so differently. Keep it up!
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Frans
Member
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# Posted: 16 Nov 2017 07:09am
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So then we tackled the old house.
First we removed the old rotten wood window frames and door frames.
Old wood window frame
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Old door
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Frans
Member
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# Posted: 16 Nov 2017 07:11am
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Then we replaced it with steel window frames.
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Frans
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# Posted: 16 Nov 2017 07:12am
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And put glass in.
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Frans
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# Posted: 16 Nov 2017 07:26am
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Then we started inside.
I decided to change the layout of the house inside completely. The old bathroom was about 25 square meters and I decided to change it into an open plan kitchen with the next room and change the old kitchen into a sleeping room and then divide one of the rooms to make a smaller bathroom.
When we started to remove the old bathroom door and wall to form the open plan we found a huge old arch in the wall and decided to keep the wall with the arch.
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Frans
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# Posted: 16 Nov 2017 07:31am
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The old bathroom walls were in a terrible state with plaster coming off. We decided to replace the window with a French door and to install a new window.
Bathroom walls
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Door and window
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Frans
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# Posted: 16 Nov 2017 07:40am
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Then we tiled the new kitchen floor and painted the walls. I wanted to just replace the rotten floor planks in the next room, but my wood working skills sucks and we decided to rather replace the damaged floor with tiles.
Rotten wood floor
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Concrete floor
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Frans
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# Posted: 16 Nov 2017 07:58am
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A couple of months ago the church on a neighboring town decided to replace their slate tile roof with corrugated iron. I made them an offer and bought two tipper truck loads (700 m²) of slate roof tiles. I found one of those water tile cutters with diamond blade at the pawn shop and thought that I would cut nice square tiles for the floors. Then we saw that it goes so slow that it would take months to cut enough tiles for the floors.
So we decided to use the tiles without cutting the edges straight. We started yesterday and will grout when finished.
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Frans
Member
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# Posted: 16 Nov 2017 08:01am
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In the meantime we have whitewashed the outside walls with lime and painted the roof.
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Desim
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2020 01:54pm
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old but nice thread. Wonder what it looks like now?
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