Walls Up and Walls Down (Feb/March)

A bathroom doorway unexpectedly appears...

Meanwhile, back at the house things were progressing rapidly. Our builder had blatantly ignored any restrictions of the V2 ‘simple permission’ and proceeded to knock walls down, change doorways and basically do all the major structural changes that were supposed to wait until we had the V1 permission.

One morning we’d arrived at the house to find a doorway knocked through to the bathroom, as we’d planned, to turn it into a dual-access ensuite.

“I thought we weren’t meant to make any alterations to the layout until we get the V1?” I said to Vincent.

“Err, no, we weren’t,” he replied and popped off to try and find our build manager. After speaking to him, we were reassured that the doorway wasn’t a problem because there had been a door there originally, but it had been bricked up later on.

This explanation was perhaps ok in that instance, but couldn’t be stretched to the other, more major structural jobs that followed. Our builder glossed it over however, saying that it wouldn’t be a problem, everyone did things this way and we’d have the appropriate paperwork eventually.

“But what about the building inspection the authorities have to do before we get the V1 paperwork?” I asked. “Surely they’ll notice that the layouts have changed – all they need to do is look at the original plans that our architect has drawn up.”

“Don’t worry,” said the builder, “I know people at the baladiya and when the time comes there won’t be a problem.”

“Fine,” I said, “but if there’s baksheesh that needs to be paid because of this, it’s coming out of your pocket not ours.”

The big changes were coming thick and fast: cracks repaired and some walls entirely rebuilt, doorways being opened out and turned into arches, floors/ceilings (depending on how you look at it) between levels being rebuilt and new wooden beams being put in, and, most excitingly, walls being completely removed and replaced with solid metal beams as horizontal support.

This was the most exciting because it totally changed the sense of space and suddenly let in so much more light.

We’ve done this in two places. Firstly, on the ground floor we’ve created an open kitchen in order to gain a valuable extra couple of metres and to make the kitchen activity a feature of the restaurant. Secondly, on the first floor we turned a narrow, non-functional corridor room into a balcony, which, when furnished with a bar and stool seating will create the perfect place to perch when dining solo or in twos and look directly into the kitchen action down below.

Creating the balcony has also brought in tons of light to the two dining rooms it joined – through the new, big archways, sunlight suddenly illuminated what had previously been dark corners.

We’ve also decided that the balcony is the ideal spot for leaving the brickwork exposed, thus creating another feature. (An experienced medina renovator friend has assured us that he knows how to properly seal the wall so the lime and sand mortar doesn’t crumble).

These major changes had really made us appreciate the value of our engineer, who had been visiting the site twice a week to supervise the work. It was he who ensured that two metal beams were used to take the load when removing the walls instead of just one, and he was currently monitoring the new cracks that kept appearing in the walls of the dodgy top level.

It was becoming more and more apparent that this level had been hastily and cheaply added on at some point and a lot of rebuilding was necessary. Unfortunately, modern, hollow bricks had been stuck on top of the properly built walls, and then concrete poured onto thin metal beams to make the roof. The drainage from the flat roof hadn’t been done properly and so rainwater had rotted the concrete and rusted the beams through. So, as the walls were being repaired on the floors below, the house had begun to shift, causing bigger and bigger cracks to split apart the shoddy brickwork. We were going to have to remove the top metre and a half of all the walls and rebuild them using proper bricks, and then redo the whole terrace/roof. For the moment though, the builders had slapped a bit of plaster over the new cracks and our engineer said it wasn’t in any danger of collapsing. Phew! That would have been a few too many walls coming down for our liking…

Rebuilding a wall on the first level.

The wall almost rebuilt and our builder's novel scaffolding through the walls.

The blue wall, just before its destruction...

Let there be light! The balcony is created.

Opening up the kitchen and repairing the upper wall - the floor in-between obviously needs replacing!

Metal beams in and second level kitchen wall fixed.