Building a Natural Stone Patio | Restoring an Abandoned Barn in Portugal

good morning everyone and welcome back to another installment of our portuguese barn conversion series it's a very crisp morning but we're super excited because we are back on the barn we are gonna try and finish the patio area under our veranda we've been thinking about this since the summer and we think that we've finally come up with the perfect solution it's going to be good to finally have a space where we can hang out set up the pizza oven and just have an area that's nicely covered we're the indie projects b and theo and we've been living and traveling the world in vans for the past six years we're currently renovating an abandoned stone barn in portugal to turn into a beautiful tiny home for us and our cats gingee bear and fernando follow our journey from the very beginning as we document the whole process of creating an off-grid home so nice having a truck to be able to just load everything we need into the back of it we just drove an hour to the city and we picked up the stone that we need to finish the veranda and i can't wait to see how it looks the stone that we picked is so nice and it matches perfectly with our barn now we've got to move all of this stone a massive pallet's worth over to the barn it's not that far away but it's going to be heavy work [Music] nearly there seriously neither we just left it like this it messes with my mind because i'm a very precise person i like everything to be perfect and this stuff and stone you don't want it to be perfect you want it to be like all over the place so i have to kind of try and not think about it too much and just whack them in as you said that you just place three perfectly rectangle four five in a row very nice knee yeah that is what we don't want there we go i am so happy with the choice of stone that we got in the end we were umming and ouring between the one we've got and another type that was slightly darker but in the end this one that we've chosen blends in seamlessly with the bar and it's like the wall just continues down onto the floor and it's going to look so good when it's done i mean it already looks fantastic right now and it's not even finished so it's going to be brilliant okay so as you can see we've laid out all of the stone that we got off the back of the truck because as you saw it all came in big piles we didn't know what they were all going to look like our gave us a chance to give us an idea of what we've got so it's not going to be staying like this we're going to be picking this back up and getting it ready for the paving but we're so happy with how it looks and it's not even finished before we get started with the main bit of the patio we need to work on the existing wall that was built back in the summer because since then it's managed to accumulate a lot of dirt a lot of grit and bits like that and that's also going to be getting completed along with the patio so we need to make sure all the gaps in between the stone are nice and clean before we move on with the rest of it it's warming up nicely you've got you've got that one underneath as well zipped up crazy it's not time for a break just yet but having a truck is really dangerous because we pick these up from the side of the road and it's going to be so nice on the veranda we got a nice sofa that can fit three people yeah so this is outdoor furniture isn't it it's really nice and we're going to cover this as well just like this chair we bought it it's already being covered it looks so weird portuguese people are quite small this chair is really small and it feels like if i get any bigger i'll end up getting up and sitting up with it like that because it's really close to my hips it's comfy though it's really comfortable it's quite it's quite upright so if you want an upright position but if you want a chilled position looking at the view that also turns into a bed so what guests can sleep if you come and visit her she's sleeping outside on the patio so so [Applause] now we don't actually have a tamp so theo is using a really high high-tech one that we that we just made out of a piece of wood it is working it's i mean we know it's oh just as it's on camera bloody breaks but we knew the um you know this isn't like a a mega authentic way of doing it but it's still doing it so it's totally fine this morning was perfect because we had a big delivery of course and about half a which was absolutely brilliant time because it was supposed to arrive last night but the truck had issues so they came this morning which is great because it means we can get onto the next bit which i've really been looking forward to i don't know why the fun part of making the sand cement mix so for this technique we're going off advice given to us from our friend nick who's a builder which is always really useful to have and what it is it's a dry mix it's a three part sand to one cement and this is going to allow a nice foundation for our slabs to sit on and then we can just do a nice dry grout over the top spray it with this that will set off the cement and harden and jobs are good and we should have a really nice patio we have been going at it for the last two hours i've been mixing cement it's back breaking work b has been laying the stones which is also breath-breaking work but it's looking so good you can see it behind me and we're nearly halfway we're trying to get halfway by the end of play today and then tomorrow we can finish it how good does it look it's actually seamless you can't tell where the join is on the far side and once it's all like grouted and pointed it will look amazing it's going to match the wall perfectly it already feels like the space is so much bigger can you not fernando's getting in the way as usual he's getting in the way but he's uh he's been a lot of fun to have jumping on my back trying to urinate and probably defecate in the sand which is brilliant but like i said it does seem so much bigger because we've no longer got like that wall enclosing us it just goes out it's lovely actually it is another beautiful day here in portugal i love it when the sun's out it makes everything so much easier and we're cracking on this morning i've been mixing sand and cement and my back feels like it's broken and b has been laying the slabs and she's doing an amazing job and right now i'll talk you through the process first of all can we just appreciate how good this is looking the light's really contrasty at the moment but it looks amazing and fernando as always has been loitering around trying to poo in the in the cement which is always great maybe we should leave one of his poos cemented in there as a kind of memento to fernando so okay so first off come over here grab a bag of cement we got this from max matt i picked up a load earlier on in the project because i knew i was going to need this at some point and then i use this bucket to measure out the cement throw it in the mixer and then using the same bucket measure out three buckets of coarse sand we got three square meters delivered yesterday and it looks like we're gonna have a fair amount left so that's good for other projects so then i just let that mix in the mixer for a decent amount of time until it's nice and fine and bound together and then a wheelbarrow it over to the work area which is where the fun happens and the fun that theo is referring to involves a trowel a rubber mallet and a very nice mister because i'm basically building a gigantic granite jigsaw puzzle which is very fun and pleasing to do but also oh so time consuming so i don't know whether our classic is fun but i suppose it's more fun than theo's job it'll be fun when it's finished yeah it's more fun than your job that you've got anyway so i suppose i have got the funner job so once the area is level buddhist checks that the stone fits and then she uses the mister to wet the area to get the adhesion and then puts the stone down and using the rubber mallet just knocks it into position make sure it's all level and there we go all done and continues that a million times good morning everybody my morning voice is hilarious so we've just woken up because we managed to do this whole half last night which looks absolutely amazing filling in the grout which is just more sand cement mixture it looks so good when i look at that over there now it looks mad but theo's just topping up some bits that we missed aren't you yeah you can see the massive difference between this side and the side over there that's not being done this side looks so much better it's just gonna bring it all together and finish it off nicely and what we're doing is i'm using this plastic bottle that i've just cut off the uh the bottom so i can fill it up with the grout and i can pour it out of this small section into the areas i mean i've pretty much done here but you can see i can direct it into the areas that i need it so it doesn't go on the stone as much and then it's just a case of getting a paintbrush and brushing it off the stone into the gaps and we were originally planning on using the old sponge method which is very fast and effective in it and it makes it look really lovely but unfortunately because of the stones that we're using they're all different shapes and sizes they're quite rough the sponge can't do the job that it normally would do on a lovely flat smooth tile so that's why we're using the brush and it's another cold morning here as you can see the chairs are covered in a layer of frost fernando doesn't mind though do you he loves the chair this is your favorite isn't it too cute oh my gosh look at that madness crazy oh you haven't mentioned your amazing flotation device is theo's brain child it's really great he's been using it because um he loves to use it i've been doing all the edges he's been doing the middle so what we've done is breeze block a ladder that randomly has wheels on it and a plank of wood so it means that we can get across without touching walking disturbing and this piece of wood moves we did see that there the wood went all the way across so he could do the middle bit as well he's very clever man aren't ya yes this is why i married you fernando so we've filled in all of the gaps with the sand cement it's the same mix that we used to lay the actual slabs on and now i've just got the mister i'm gonna go around and just wet all of the uh all in between the stones and then that will hopefully set off the cement and it will harden up and in a couple of days we should be able to walk on it and it should be good can't wait so [Applause] [Music] so here we have it we have now sprayed water on every single crack now crack was left unsprayed and obviously it's quite dark at the moment because it is wet uh theo is just going over it with the sprayer just to make sure it's thoroughly wet because that's basically going to allow it to set nicely and stay compact so really excited to see what it looks like when it's dry so oh what did he get you in the fight this kid is ridiculous what are you doing he's this boxer isn't it look at you at least there's no clue this is ridiculous we're just on our way down to the well because we're running out of drinking water and the truck is perfect for this kind of thing this is our main well where we get all of our water from on the property and as you can see it's really full at the moment which is a good sign and this is where we get all of our drinking water so as theo said this is where we get all of our water from the main well and we pump it up into our rbc tank behind us which means it's super easy to come down open the tap and fill up our water device so this is the lifesaver jerrycan and we think this is an absolute must if you live off grid or you live in a vehicle we've been parked up in our van in so many locations where we've had to leave because we've ran out of drinking water we could have stayed there for days and days at a time in the middle of nowhere next to a river but there was no way to drink the water without boiling it which is a very long process but this thing filters all of our water and we could drink it straight from the well this means that we don't have to leave the property for drinking water so there's pretty much got everything we need on our property and don't need to leave which is really good and saves a lot of time going to fine drinking water and you don't want to buy loads of bottles of water because that's a lot of waste a lot of plastic this thing's a beast let's show you how it works the lifesaver jerrycan can hold up to 18 and a half liters of water and is designed exclusively for dirty water the microbiological water filter uses ultra filtration technology to filter out bacteria viruses cysts and parasites from contaminated water sources the purifier is capable of filtering 20 000 liters of water and is safe to drink immediately the use of a carbon filter ensures the water tastes great and you can even get an additional shower attachment for safe showering too so then you've got perfectly clean drinking water as long as your cat doesn't stick its foot in it and it tastes lovely it really does straight from our well and it tastes like crystal clear water i would not be without this lifesaver jerrycan when we're traveling or on our land so if you're interested we reached out to them and they've offered 10 off for you guys until the end of february so check it out link's in the description oh it's freezing and the veranda is finished we hope we've covered it all over for now because the temperature is set to get very cold tonight and we don't want the cement not to be able to go off because it's so cold there's nothing we can really do today is the warmest day and the warmest night in the next 10 days so we thought we'd better just get it done hope for the best and hopefully it will set and everything will be solid and won't move around but i'm confident i'm confident it's gonna work but we just have to wait and see we can only work with the weather conditions that we've got but i'm so happy with how it looks it looks incredible i can already imagine all the furniture on there the pizza oven it's a little shelf sticking off the side of the barn i just can't wait it's going to be ace i think you just broke this over oh my body slammed the back into me so comfy i'm happy that we uh take other people's rubbish away for them yeah i mean we are basically a rubbish removal service if you've got anything that you think we can reuse drop a comment public service announcement no we are wrapped up warm because it is cold but we're feeling really happy this week aren't we yeah it's so good like it's such a good project and it's it's one that we were able to complete in just you know three days so it's nice to kind of start something and complete it in one video and we will definitely be showing you the finished veranda uncovered in next week's video so make sure you tune in hit that subscribe button and notifications on so you know when the video does come out and we'll see you next week

Channel: The Indie Projects

Views: 203,543

Rating: 4.9556985 out of 5

Keywords: theo and bee, the indie projects, patio, patio ideas, veranda, building, restoring an abandoned barn, portuguese homestead barn conversion, debt free life, barn conversion, off grid, homesteading, alternartive living, living off grid, modern steader, self reliance, lifesaver jerrycan, water filter, microbiological water filter, building with stone, tiny house homestead, farm life, sustainable living for beginners, land in portugal, buying land in portugal, simple living

Id: 2SxoCFHRB5M

Length: 23min 29sec (1409 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021