A sea of concrete - preparing the foundations

Today was the day for foundations - it was fun watching it going down.

Here are some more images of the new foundations - its important to keep the old walls intact, and secure them with new concrete.

digging out the water tank

This is the water tank that was created by my dad in the 60's. It was in the days before pumped water, and each house had to draw water from a hand pump down the road. Dad built the tank to store water from the roof, and them pump it into the house. Pretty modern for those days. He built it by hand with his dad, and used lots and lots of concrete....which meant that I had to struggle to remove it! Why remove it? Because it is sitting right in the place where my bedrooms will go. I had to use two jackhammers and a JCB over three days to remove it.

1926 School Roll Books

Here are some more examples of what's in the roll books - but this time in Irish. The books went from English to Irish after the free state was established in 1922. For whatever reason, the books remained written in English until 1926.
My Aunt's name - Una McNamara above


My uncles, Tom and Jim McNamara, above.

Ganty National Schoolhouse Roll Books 1925

Mary J. Clune
Delia O'Hagan
Ignatius Hynes
Michael Melvin
Edward J. Keane
Peter Broughan
Michael Uniacke
John Melvin

Ganty National School Roll Books 1925

Michael McNamara
Michael Broughan
Tom Raftery
Partick Dempsey
Malachi Raftery
Patrick O'Hagan
John Raftery
Mary Dempsey
Eileen Kennedy
Frances Kennedy
Philomena McNamara
Kathleen Connolly
Patrick Melvin
Patrick Raftery
Sean Hynes

Observations and Suggestions of District Inspector, Ganty National School, Craughwell, Co. Galway 1850

Here are some photos of the genuine school roll books. You can see the date in the above photo.

Here are some notes from the school inspector - he notes that "proficiency is low..." and arithmetic is also not so good...

Knocking down the extension

This is what knocking down old walls is like... hard to do, but it has to be done. This was my family home, and the idea of knocking down walls that we once lived in is quite hard. These are the rooms that we used to live in. I suppose it is about creating a new place to live, apart from the past.

This is what my architect has designed for the interior... my architect is called Fergal O'Dowd, and he's based in Galway. The thing that's good about architects is that they help you to visulalise your plans. The photo below was created by a designer in India, from the plans my architect designed. This way, you can easily see the routes between the rooms, and you can make changes before going too far into the building process.

Still at it. Struggling to get things done in this economy! However, it means that things are cheaper. I've been told by others that things are coming down in price considerably! The price of insulation, windows, doors and many other everyday items are coming down in price, due to the builders providers need to sell more, and become less greedy. As soon as more money comes in, I'm going to start buying more things....