First Frost - pondering to change our terrazzo into an ice rink

in Homesteading2 days ago (edited)

A couple of days ago, I shared the above photo in a family chat. It showed our (un)house, seen from the front, with the terrazzo covered in plastic. An attempt to stop rain water from leaking into ( the ceiling of ) our cantina/storage space underneath.

This thick 10x10 meter sheet of plastic was originally meant to be used to cover our roof, but in the end the roof seems to hold up better than we thought and we covered the most important belongings on the inside of our house with smaller plastic coverings. Therefore, we decided to give the big sheet another purpose.

There was quite a lot of rain predicted and we started to get a bit worried about the amount of water making its way into our lower room ceiling, as the latter isn’t in a great state, to say the least.

When I was about to share the photo with my family, Clare suggested to add “First snow of the year…” to the picture, as it kind of looks like it if you glanced at it briefly ( and most people have the attention span of a gold fish these days ) and so I did.

My mom responded with: “That is probably pretty chilly up on the hillside. My twinsister said: "wow!!" and my younger sister replied with a snowman emoji.

We had a good laugh over it ( and so had my brother, it seemed as he used the same emoji @clareartista used, when she replied to my fam with: "This is a big plastic sheet, actually 😂"

The collage above shows our terrazzo, a couple of days later.

We were gone for the weekend, to move some more of our belongings from Clare's previous house ( that we still haven't sold ) to our new place.

When we checked back in on the land, to feed the cats and find out how the covering had held up, yesterday morning, we eventually found out that although it had kept most of the water out, there was enough water on top of it to fill a medium sized swimming pool with.

If it would have frozen over ( we actually had our first bit of night frost as shown on the photo at the top of this writing ), it would make for the first ice rink in our town ⛸️

Anyhow, all kidding aside, back to yesterday morning...

while I was taking a walk through the foresty part of our garden to calm down my nervous system and scout for mushrooms, Clare discovered that the terrazzo and thus the ceiling of our cantina was in an even worse state than we already thought it was. It seems pretty challenging to stop the water from coming in, especially the way it is set up, right now.

We ending up spending a couple of hours, on our Sunday afternoon, getting rid of the excess water, digging a make shift gutter and removing the side of the terrazzo ( roof tiles and bricks ). The latter unfortunately led to us having to open up the little garden that we had started in front of it.

I could make this in a very long story but suffice to say that, even though reality is starting to sink in more and more ( about the state of the house building on our land ), we won't hang our heads down.

We are two very creative people and we always find a way. Although we don't really know where to start, we actuallly like the challenge of slowly turning this botch job of an unhouse into a place that actually works for us.

I'll keep you all posted!

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We've built two sheds and despite our best efforts both have leaks. Of course we covered them in plastic sheeting but now we have to siphon the water off periodically to stop the roof falling in. Builders we're not!

Do your sheds have flat roofs?

A builder I'm not, either, but Clare is quite a bit more skillful in that area, as she has (mostly) single-handedly 'chipped' away at her previous house, for many years.

Yeah, flat roofs.

Clare is quite a bit more skilful in that area

That lady never ceases to amaze!

Yes; one step at a time, and every step bringing fun, treasure and sweet silly-ness 🤗🥰😂

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Even with all the water leaks and repairs, you still kept a positive and funny outlook. Turning a waterlogged terrazzo into an ‘ice rink’ made me smile.


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I have very limited experience with snow (only seen some ice snow once) and your "first snow of the year" would have registered as weird mostly because of how localised it was XD

Sounds like that ceiling is a priority fix?

You’re doing well but be careful of the forestry part of your garden
Have a nice day!