30/04/16 | ۩ |

I'm not sure about the best way to name this room of the ground floor, so I'll call it generically the service room.

It's a small square area which opens on one side to the main warehouse and on the other gives access to the woodshed placed in the under-stair storage unit.

In the middle of the floor (at a lower lever than the warehouse) there's a small round hole. At first it was thought to be the well to lift water from the cistern to the upper floors, but it'd need more manholes on every level and that could be uncomfortable (and dangerous), corresponding with the stairwell.





So I start working on the manhole, raising its perimeter with a new ring of bricks as I already made with the other one





Then, to solve the problem of the drop between this room and the warehouse, I lay two stone steps.

On second thoughts, this element could be a cause for serious accidents: I seem to see some young assistant stumbling on a step and fall headfirst into the open manhole...





Damn, boy! You must pay attention to where you walk! This is a medieval house and, for what I know, the stairs at that times were not standard sized. The only concern of builders was structural soundness and details such as accessibility and security were put on the back burner.

I think people used to pay more attention than we do to the irregularities of the ground. A broken leg in the Middle Ages could have been a harder problem to solve than today...





Having said this (mainly to avoid possible charges for physical or moral damages), we can go back to the laying of our floor.

Nothing new about the making of the foundation: a bit of quick setting cement, then drying and polishing. The vault was previously covered with cement remained after the construction of warehouse's floor.

I'll be using my Das homemade bricks once again, laying them face-up following a diagonal line. This change of pattern, along as the presence of the stone step, should help people to detect clearly the passage from a room to the other.





Around the new brick floor you still can see the empty space where I'll build the walls and pillars. Beside the manhole, along the stone wall of the tower, will be set the passage for the under-stair and the woodshed (and more steps, dera boys).

Here is a preview:













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MATERIALS:slate, Das bricks, cement, vinyl glueTOOLS:pincers, sandpaper, file, tweezersSIZE (in cm):room: 6,5 x 7,8step: width 5,3; height 0,2manhole diameter: 1,8bricks: 0,8 x 0,5 x 0,3