We were back on site by 8:30am today with a first priority of finishing the walls. My day started in exactly the same way as yesterday – sieving sand with AJ and Martin to make the cement.

The house is actually being built on a slope, so one end is higher than the other. AJ and I spent the next hour or so building a wooden platform along this edge of the house so that we had a more stable base for the ladders. For the rest of the morning we were all concentrating on finishing the exterior bricklaying and pointing.

After another lunch at the village hall we started laying the foundations for the roof, consisting of a thick wooden frame lying on top of the walls with nine joists running across it. Any large gaps between the wooden frame and brickwork were packed with broken roof tiles to provide extra support before being filled with cement. One of the more complicated problems we encountered is that the foundations of the new house were laid in a position that slightly overlaps with the roof of the old house. Consequently we have had to carefully remove parts of the old roof so that we can put the new one in place.

Work has been fairly constant since we arrived with breaks few and far between – the general feeling amongst the team is that we would like to get as much done as possible before we leave Romania. There was however a general pause this afternoon while we watched the daily ritual of the cows walking home. Most of the small farms in the village do not have a suitable area for their cows to graze so they are taken up the hill to a dedicated field each morning. As the sun starts to go down the cows walk home en masse, apparently of their own accord, each finding and returning to their own house.

My last job of the day was to start laying boards on the top of the house to form the floor of the loft area which will be used for storage. By the time we left the building was really starting to look like a house for the first time.