I refer to this as the 'Dig' because the corner of the
workshop that we're building the bathroom in used to be part of a garden.
In November 1944, Hengelo was bombed by the Allies because it has a direct rail link to
Berlin (pictures 29-32 were taken from within a few meters of Kees' house, which was largely undamaged by the bombing). The garden ended up with a big hole in it that was subsequently
filled with debris from houses destroyed in the bombing. As we began
digging to install pipes and the foundation we found a lot of rusted nails,
pieces of bricks, pottery, china, and glass.
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This is the corner of the bathroom-to-be. We dug
a trench 50cm deep and approximately 2 meters in each direction from
this corner to lay drainage pipes. Across from where I'm standing
we dug another trench about 30cm deep and 4 meters long to put in a
foundation for the outer wall. |
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This is looking toward the same corner of the previous photo. We put the pipes and foundation in place, filled the trenches, and cut a new opening in the brick wall for a door (brick dust and water make quite a mess!)
The outer wall is made of YTONG blocks that measure 20x60x7 cm. |
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This is the mostly-completed outer wall. After the YTONG cement had dried completely, I covered it with imitation brick tiles. I'm still putting cement in between the tiles to complete the illusion of real brick. The advantage to building the wall this way is that YTONG with tiles is much lighter than real brick. We added the glass blocks to take advantage of the natural light that comes in through the skylights in the workshop. |
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Close-up of a glass block. They measure 19x19 cm. |
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This is the corner from the first picture. Kees has put up cement over the brick so that we have an even surface to place tiles onto. |