Dezember 2002

Our Christmas tree is lit at night and is visible from the main road. It is my lighthouse on the way home from work. We have planted a tree next to the heather garden but it's still too small for lights.

Karl has been busy in the meantime. Much of his work is not immediately visble but we are used to that after building two boats. Meters of cable can be laid and ideas grow and blossom and still there's nothing much to be seen or photographed.
In the roof above the garage there was a wooden shelf, goodness knows what for. Maybe just to hide the one rotting rafter that was revealed on its removal? No problem for Karl - out it came and a new one inserted!
One of the most visible changes was the removal of the other scruffy old garage door. It was touch and go with the weather. It had to be done on a Saturday when I was available to help and even then Karl had to cut it in two so that we could handle it alone. The gaping hole was covered with a tarp and then behind it the new door was positioned and the wall closed.
The threshold was cemented and the propane heater fired the extension so that it couldn't freeze before it set. In the wall are drain pipes and cables. If you look closely you'll see there's an outdoor wall light too.
An unplanned job was the roof. A few tiles needed replacing... the new ones are a little narrower these days so Karl decided to completely redo the dormer roof and thereby have enough old tiles for the replacements. Of course it poured the day he hired the platform...
...but by the time I came home the work was done.
In the meantime, work was also progressing in the central heating room, where the oil tanks were being walled off from the heater and the tanks for the solar heating were also installed (2x 800 litres).
Those tanks were sooo heavy...! There was no way the driver was to be persuaded to help carry them down the narrow steps so they were unloaded into the garage which of course is on the other side of the house. That meant : back up the drive, along the road in front of the house, down the steps into the hall and then into the central heating room. Wow, that was hard work, but with the help of our new tenant (who was home because he was ill, as we discovered afterwards) and a friend in the village, we managed to get them there. They were tied to the tow bar of the car to let them down the steps and they had to be stood up in the doorway of the cellar to get them past the heating. There was a moment where we envisaged dismantling the heating pipes... but it just fitted.
Now we are planning a few days of peace and relaxation in the Allgäu over Christmas - before tackling the next jobs...