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| Pavements (II) |
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Pavement in Ulaanbaatar. |
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| Pavements |
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Ulaanbaatar looked like a work in progress when I arrived two months ago. Getting on a bus along the main street that stretches through the city from East to West for more than ten kilometres, the traveller can see construction activity on pavements, pipe lines, new buildings and reforms everywhere. It is the most magnificent buildings that draw our attention first, of course. There are plenty, some also under reform, some others waiting restoration, all of them diverse, showing a great diversity of shapes and styles. It was more recently, two weeks ago, walking around the centre and towards the mountains of the south of the city, that I could appreciate that what looks like a desire for diversity in buildings was also present in pavements. It looked like almost every street had different tiles or a different pattern. So, on my way for a day hike with a group of friends, I quickly took some pictures before we reached the unpaved road and slightly snow-covered paths to the mountain. |
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| Maintenance painting (some brush and roller) on outside walls |
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Good weather to paint some outside walls. Using a brush to cut in the edges and a roller for the rest of the surface. The walls were already painted, no primer, only a washing down was needed.
Two coats were applied, the first one slightly watered. |
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| A former construction worker |
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It was about a month and a half ago last time I visited a construction site. This was a new house, the only one being built around at present. I was told that there was only one bricklayer in the site, so there I went to offer my services, nothing new to me, from bringing mortar and place the bricks on the scaffold to put some rows and rise some walls had I the time and were found skilled enough to do so. There were two bricklayers already, and the rest of the team about to come one of these days. Apparently there was no need to hurry up, work is still scarce!
Construction has become an extra skill that, sometimes, could be well worth mentioning in a CV. Something I do proudly, of course.
Not only. Last week I still could use my trowel to fix the hinged support for a fence. And earlier this month I spread some concrete as a slab for a garage entry. It was some years of hard work and some study, perhaps too many different tasks, changing too soon to become the perfect master, though enough to handle a couple of tools and mix some mortar. |
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| Maintenance |
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These rainy months there is more time for small maintenance activities. Basic shuttering and bricklaying. A new ground slab below the barn, a small wall for a gate, setting up a post in a fence, placing a concrete drainage pipe.
Note added on April, 22.
This is a 1 m length wall, very small in length. To build it I used different bricks that remained from works done in previous years. As I had a very small amount of equal bricks, I wanted to avoid cutting them. This why the joints do not appear exactly centered in this row, as I wanted to avoid cutting them to have sufficient bricks to finish the wall. Joints should be more centered, each brick finishing at the length of half the bricks on the inferior and superior rows. |
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| Laminate flooring |
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The final step in the room before placing furniture was installing the floor. An easy, quick and affordable solution is laminate flooring. As it happens with tiles, first, the planks have to be oriented, pieces for the borders and final row have to be cut. Having spent several months, several sites and having even been in several different companies where part of the job was flooring with tiles, it is not as easy as it seems and it takes more than, hum, "several months" experience (at least to me) to be a professional. Having never before worked with laminated flooring, though it is not actually a very difficult task, and it doesn't indeed require high technical skills, I relied again on an experienced worker for this and the man writing here at present took his share as the assistant, the ground worker, the last one: at this I have ?some? experience . More than ?several months?, for sure. :-) |
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| Corridor |
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Views of the ceiling and walls when finished. |
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| A plasterboard ceiling. Details (and II) |
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 Support plate around the perimeter, joists and board. |
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| A plasterboard ceiling. Details (I) |
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Apart from fastened with screws and nuts, some joists were tied with wire to increase stiffness and further avoid lateral displacement. |
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| A plasterboard ceiling |
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 Third day arranging a room and corridor: building ceilings and leaving walls ready to be painted.
The approach: given the height, the perimeter of the room is traced with a line marker, a plate fixed along the leveled line to support the joists. Joists screwed to the plate around the perimeter, anchored to the ceiling with threaded rods and tied one to the other with nuts.
The plasterboard is screwed against the beams and structure is done!
Then perforated plasterboard tape is taped over the joints, joint filler paste applied on the joints and screw heads. The dried paste is rubbed next day with sand paper to give a good finish. A coat of plaster is given to the walls and ceiling and rubbed again to leave the surface ready for painting. |
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| Filling joints |
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| Back to refractory tasks this month: only to repair the joints (ceiling, floor and walls) for high-temperature insulation of a furnace in a steel rebar manufacturing plant. |
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| Still refractory |
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I spent most of the past two months in refractory activities again. Not the best job I have ever had, not the one I like the most. A job. These days you cannot ask too much. Let's see what the future brings. |
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