Home Improvements, Pt. 94: the terrace

The last few weeks here in the James household have been taken up with the terrace being reclad in stone slabs. When we originally built the house, we had the terrace tiled. Below are two shots of it from 2015. At first glance, it looks great, but the problems had already begun. The thin tiles were breaking off, unable to cope with Polish winters, and those upright beams had started rotting at their bases and needed replacing:

During Covid, all the tiles finally broke up and the terrace has looked a mess ever since. We finally found a crew to redo it, and we decided to go back to basics. I dug out all of the earth and plants around it to leave this:

This week, the crew we hired finally finished the work. We still need to tidy up a couple of things and of course the grass, etc. needs to grow back. In addition, Mrs James will plant some tulips in the new beds you can see either side of the steps. For the eagle-eyed among you, you may notice that the facia board above the steps has been cut away. That’s because the sand and slabs added 8cm to the height of the floor, which meant I hit my head going up the steps. Still, it looks nice now