Grouting, grouting, grouting

The paving slabs are now all laid (hooray!) Now for another time consuming job - I have to grout all the gaps in between. For those of you who have grouted tiles, this is nothing like the same job - the joints are 10mm and the stones are porous, the grout is a lime/sand mixture so you cannot just slap it on and swirl it about until it falls in the holes. It is a painstaking exercise of trouelling the mixture and pushing right down to the bottom of the joints. I have been at it for 4 days and I think that I've got another 6 or 8 days to do .... on my knees, bent over double with an icy wind bearing down on me. However, it is looking great. Because of the below zero temperatures at night, I am having to cover it up with polystyrene sheets to protect it each night - roll on the summer!

The icing on the cake!

Today I found that the easiest way to grout the edging stones for the pool (5cm thick and rounded edges over the pool) was to use a Lakeland Plastics disposable icing bag ! Went in a treat - as easy as making a cake :-)

Paving Progress

Paving the terrasse

For the past four days we have been laying the paving for the terrasse around the pool. This involves laying a sand/cement mix (une chape) of about 5cm - tamping down, levelling and making absolutely flat. After this a mix of pure cement and water (une barbotine) is slopped on to glue the slabs to the chape. This has been one of the hardest jobs I have ever done - the sheer surface area (154 metres square) and the weight of the stone - but we're nearly there - probably 1.5 days to go ...

Edging stones

Today I finished installing the margelles, or edging stones for the pool. It has taken me four days of hard slog - I had to do it on my own because I am known as Bonnie Tiler here and so everyone thought they'd leave it to the expert - ha! It was hard because each stone weighs about 10kg and they have to be millimetre accurate because the slabs for the rest of the terrasse are the same colour and width (but not the same depth) so these edging stones will be the starting point of the rest of the 154m2 - the joints and the height all need to line up. I have used 150 kg of tile cement to put them down because they need to be solid - people will pull themselves out of the pool by the edges.

I ache everywhere, back, arms, shoulders, elbows and knees ....

P.S. The water will be cleaner than this when the pool is put in service!!!

704 paving slabs arrived this morning - another little job for me to do ....