29/06/16 | ۩ |

It's finally time to start the construction of the tower!









The structure will include in its squared perimeter the stairwell and the woodshed, exposing one side to the alley (on the right façade) and the opposite to the warehouse.

Its total height will reach 80 centimeters (40 meters in scale) and probably will be finished around year MMXXII. Actually, it begun long ago, with the laying of the stone walls ... In fact, the tower is built into the Domus until aproximately half its height, although the only difference between the tower's walls and the rest of the building is the use of a different kind of stone.The structure will include in its squared perimeter the stairwell and the woodshed, exposing one side to the alley (on the right façade) and the opposite to the warehouse.Its total height will reach 80 centimeters (40 meters in scale) and probably will be finished around year MMXXII.





The stones I used (floor gravel gently loaned by a public park) will be substitute in the upper part with more suitable materials I recently found in Genoa.

These variations, very common on medieval buildings, could be required by economic problems or due to specific characteristics of the materials. So, a wall formed by large and roughly-cut stones could continue with smaller and regularily shaped blocks, ending with bricks on top.

In my tower something like that will occur, not because of a lack of money, but depending on the materials I'll be able to find time after time.

Soon I'll change the gravel with river pebbles picked up along the Scrivia creek, which characteristics are very similar to the stone used in the oldest genoese buildings.

But I'll talk about that in due time, now let's see the construction in detail.

By watching the pictures in this post you can get an idea of the early steps of the tower's construction: the first attempt (discarted) to build the walls using cement bricks and the laying of the stones during the closing of the basement.





The walls keep growing on at the same time as the other walls until they reach the level of the ground floor.

Now is when I realize that I'm making a big mistake. Actually, rather than being a mistake it's something inconsistent between the tower I already built in my mind and the actual look that it's going to get.

By placing the stones the way I'm doing, the perimeter of the tower and the contiguous slate wall will coincide perfectly, resulting in a flat and uninterrupted surface, only diversified by the material used.

The tower would stand out very much better if its perimeter could slightly exceed the rest of the wall, giving us the possibility to see both corners and breaking the uniformity of the façade.

A single centimeter could do the trick, but it would mean to demolish the newly-built wall...





I decide to act immediatly, because I know that if I don't do it now I'll regret it later, risking even worse problems.

I take a steel pick and a hammer and start the demolition process. I can test this way the actual strenghtness of the glue, harder than concrete when it's totally dry.





After removing three lines of stones I can proceed to their repositioning, laying every line a little further out of the original perimeter, until I reach aproximately 1 cm on the outside.









The result could be better, also in a structural way. Anyway, this part of the wall will remain hidden under the ground, as the outer alley will run very steep. The concrete wall and the wire will be an adecuate support for the tower, I guess.









Now that the problem is solved I can keep building the stone walls, just as the rest of the structure. The other side of the tower is raising as well, emerging from the floor under construction...





MATERIALS:

stones, cement, water, vinyl glue



TOOLS:

tweezers, sandpaper, pincers, hammer, pick



SIZES (in cm):

outer perimeter: 11 x 11

walls thickness: 2 / 2,5





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