23-V-1991.
When the guys cut the slots in the beams, we had about one day to slap protective layer on them. Well at least on the outside parts.
Note the gray traces down the right side. That shows how long it stayed without a wall above that line.
Around this time we have finished the sidewalls on the upstairs of the house, and finally put together the money to buy lumber to build the roof. The roof was made by two guys from a nearby village (they were doing some work for Oma's neighbor, so she hired them from there) in just two days. The guys were good, but it's also good that I was there, because at some point they were lost in the calculation of some length, so I had to apply some of my knowledge, calculating square root on paper, using techniques I learned in 6th grade, math sekcija. Not even paper, but the inside of a cement bag, using the thick mason's pencil. It worked.
They had two troubles. First, the house is not eactly rectangular. One side is 20 cm longer than the other. I knew immediately what the trouble was - it was Lajči on 05-XI-1983., when we checked the diagonals of the foundation, and the twine was climbing over a mound of dirt one way, and I told him this will throw the measurement off, and he waved it of with a "I know, I took that in already". Most probably he didn't even get what I said. Well, the house is so now. Like we said in the seventies, who runs doesn't see, who sees thinks it's as it should be.
To an extent, the reason why we didn't get much done between 1988 and 1990 was that we were short on money and also that it took some considerable time to cut the siporeks blocks into quarters (7,5x25x60 cm) to use as the hull to pour the serklaž (circlage, believe it or not), i.e. the reinforced concrete ring around the wall tops. The cutting went slowly, and we had just a simple saw. There was a special saw we borrowed from stambena for a while, but it went dull really fast, couldn't do much with it. The simple wood saw, spanning a frame, could be just zigzagged with a simple pliers infinite number of times. It would heat up, lose tension, veer to the side, but it would still cut and the veer could be compensated against by cutting the block from each side this way or that way, so the saw's ends would cut nothing most of the time. It took time, but was eventually done. On these pictures, it's the line from which the dirty water oozed down the walls.
View from the terrace. Still no windows nor doors.
The other trouble was the height of the side walls. I was told the standard height is one meter, and I built them so. Perfectly straight, all by the line. Then these guys told me I should have an encirclement (i.e. serklaž, see above), i.e. a concrete ring to hold the weight and the push of the roof, which I made as yet another layer of blocks, cut lengthwise into quarters. Two quarters (7,5cm thick) would be the hull, and then I laid some reinforcement inside and poured concrete into it - same technique I did on the encirclement around the ceiling/floor. And I put anchors in it, so their horizontal beam (appropriately called venčanica - as it sits on this venac, i.e. wreath, and is accidentally the same word as wedding gown) put the height of these walls to a total of 135 cm. Which is still all fine, but it was always 25 cm higher than what they were used to. Well, we'll have more space upstairs, if we ever finish this.
Then we finished the walls, now that we had some idea how tall they need to be. Poured the beams above the three windows and the front terrace door. Dad would work the concrete mixer in the yard, then would bring the cart with the concrete to the entrance, then pour a bucketful at a time with fangla, and I'd lift the bucket using a pulley/winch. Then I'd bring that to her, who'd do the actual pouring.
As for the edges, we simply measured the blocks exactly to the angle required, and cut them. So the gable fit snugly to the roof-to-be. Above the window line, we went with just 15cm blocks,i.e. half width gable wall.
Boy, did she look elegant even in that nineties outfit...
Few days later we organized a moba (just family plus Arpi one day, the other day dad and Stana's husband (with baseball cap) to lay the tiles. Look at that, I'm wearing sneakers. Ah, the nineties. I'll stick to them for almost ten years. At least these had leather top.
Pouring the jumps (i.e. the row of top pieces) fell to Arpi. It's a bit of a tricky job, as you have to straddle the top of the roof, and still need both hands - one for the mortar bucket, the other for the spate, to fix these top tiles so the wind doesn't blow them away, and then other tiles row by row.
So we had a roof now.
Mentions: 05-XI-1983., 26-IX-1991., Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), fangla, Lajoš Gunaroši (Lajči), moba, Oma, sekcija, siporeks, stambena zadruga, Stana Čopanja, in serbian
17-XII-2019 - 25-III-2026