Having nearly completed the exterior caulking we turned to the interior to escape some high altitude cloudy windy rainy days.
cleaning up the beams after the mess of chinking
Willard using his newly built ladder in the stairwell
Mr Paul clearing up the mess of wood chips and caulk
Didi planing the floor joists
Mr Tongai helping the carpenters with the floor joists this week
Mr Daniel starting the roofing effort
The floor joists are finished for the day!
Now this is good – we brew our own chinking, or caulk, and get to work on those horizontal gaps between the logs:
We start out one afternoon
Mr Tongai shows us how its done
Mr Sydney taking break from carpentry
All hands on deck
The crew above are pushing in left over pieces of wood etc in preparation for the caulking
Adding an upstairs in a stone semi-circle:
Hauling up cement and carrying stones
Our combination scaffolding
Interior scaffolding
And inside the topmost level the 2nd floor (or 3rd level)
Down a floor
View of fledgling golf course and the end of the stone extension
Top of the stone build
You start to get the picture
Semi-circular stone extension
The top level
Now for the next larger extension – a semi-circular entryway and upstairs bedroom / bathroom.
Starting with the slab
Slab with cellar
Large stones form the 45 cm thick base wall
We’ll use smaller stones higher up!
And one of our trusty workhorse wheelbarrows.
Inside wall
Its a real building site at times with the stones delivered as close as possible
The style of this outer wall contrasting with the interior wall behind
Willard is still ‘burning stones’
Joining the previous bathroom extension
Raising the wall
Window frames
Mr Sidney – carpenter
More carpenter pictures to keep them happy too
Nearly complete ground floor
Our other work horse for stone delivery and a hundred other things!
Having hauled up the roofing sheets the over hung roof was added and the basic ‘box’ was completed – below:
A new doorway was subtracted using the chain saw – only slightly nerve wracking!
Cutting a doorway in a log cabin
Now for the start of something big – the first stonework extension to encompass a bathroom downstairs and extra room upstairs:
Starting the stone work extension
Mr Titius – builder and stone mason
Mr Titus on the wall
Supports included for the floor joists in the next extension
Willard burning rocks to create our building materials
Scaffolding below the upper level doorway
Corbels built into the new wall to support floor joists.
Meanwhile the carpenters create new square entryways connecting the upper levels.
The completed stonework of the bathroom extension
Our local vet and school children
One year since grandfather – Sekuru Bowden – passed away. He was remembered during this memorial service held all night in his honour:
Here we are about 40 km on the dust road north of Nyanga:
From the homestead looking North
Looking back over the homestead
Pungwe: speeches
Reading during the night
Singers during the night
One of the wabvuwi
Singer from Rusape
Service the next morning
150 lining up for food after the service
and there’s always washing up – nice location though!
In honour of Bowden Mabvira
Eastern Highlander 