Chapter 172: Reconstruction of the courtyard, the most beautiful building in Hongfeng Village
Caiyun opened the door, and Lin's father, mother, eldest brother and sister-in-law walked in together.
Lin's mother was holding a pair of cloth shoes, while Lin's father and eldest brother were holding a red envelope, which they handed to Lin Heng together.
"Mom and Dad, what are you doing?" Lin Heng was stunned and didn't know what was going on.
Xiulan and Caiyun couldn't help but smile. Xiulan said, "It seems that you are really busy and confused. Today is your birthday. Did you forget it?"
Lin Heng was stunned: "Today is the fifth day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar?"
He really had forgotten about it. He hadn't celebrated his birthday for many years, so he didn't even remember it.
"So take them quickly, they are all for your birthday." Lin's mother said with a smile.
Lin Heng laughed and said, "Thank you, Mom, Dad, Big Brother, and Big Sister-in-law."
Caiyun went into the house and took out a gray wool scarf and handed it to him, saying with a smile: "Second brother, this is a gift I prepared for you. It's a scarf I knitted myself."
"Thank you Caiyun." Lin Heng couldn't stop smiling. He didn't expect such a surprise.
Xiulan went to get the bowls and chopsticks and asked everyone to sit down and eat. He had already put on the birthday gift she prepared for Lin Heng.
Lin Heng prepared a simple hot and sour dipping sauce for them and said with a smile, "Mom, Dad, Big Brother and Big Sister-in-law, you guys should try the hot pot. I was planning to treat you guys to it in a few days."
A few people curiously picked up their chopsticks and took some food to eat, and soon showed affirmative expressions.
Father Lin showed a surprised expression: "Not bad, very delicious."
"Yes, this is hot pot, it's really good." Lin Yue nodded.
Lin's mother and sister-in-law Liu Juan were curious about how this was done and wanted to learn.
Lin Heng smiled and said, "We did it in a hurry this time. Let's make a good one in a few days."
The group of people had the meal happily. There were not many dishes and everyone ate relatively little. When the meal was almost over, Xiulan even cooked a bowl of longevity noodles for Lin Heng.
In those days, there was no way to celebrate birthdays in rural areas, let alone birthday cakes. Most people celebrated their birthdays by cooking two dishes and having a meal with their family, and the birthday person would have a bowl of longevity noodles.
The situation in Lin Heng's family is already very luxurious. When Lin Heng ate the longevity noodles, he also received blessings from his parents and family.
After the meal, my mother and sister-in-law helped wash the dishes and left. It was getting dark and there was no way to stay any longer.
"Here, this orange is pretty good." Lin Heng handed the peeled orange to Xiulan's mouth.
Xiulan ate the orange, revealed a playful smile and said, "I'm going to take a shower, you coax Xiaoxia to sleep."
"Okay." Lin Heng nodded in agreement.
He held Xiaoxia in his arms and told her stories for half an hour before she fell asleep. At this time, Xiulan had just finished her bath and said to him, "You should take a bath too. The water is ready for you."
Lin Heng took a quick shower and when he returned to the bedroom, the red candle was still lit, the candlelight flickering. Xiulan was sitting in front of the bed wrapped in a quilt, waiting for him.
"Here, this is for you."
Seeing Lin Heng coming, Xiulan gave him a bouquet of red flowers, which she learned from Lin Heng using maple leaves.
"Thank you, wife."
Lin Heng grinned, looked at the flowers and put them aside, wanting to kiss her.
Xiulan stopped him and handed him a red scarf with a smile: "Wait a minute, there is another scarf."
Lin Heng put the scarf on the table and looked at Xiulan with a sly smile: "The biggest birthday gift today is the person in front of me, right?"
He had noticed that Xiulan's long legs were wearing white stockings with his favorite black lace style underneath.
Xiulan's pretty face suddenly turned red, and she nodded gently, her voice as small as a mosquito: "Do you like it?"
"Of course, this is the best birthday present."
Lin Heng chuckled, took off the quilt, and carried his wife to the bed.
"Blow out the candles! Woo~"
Xiulan exclaimed, but her mouth was blocked before she could finish her words. She was so embarrassed that she quickly closed her eyes and hugged Lin Heng's neck.
Under the flickering candlelight, Lin Heng ate a big meat bun and did what he loved.
It is said that women are made of water. Lin Heng fully experienced this in Xiulan. He had to change the bed sheets every day, otherwise he would not be able to continue sleeping.
Today is his birthday and Xiulan promised him everything. Lighting the candles is an unprecedented experience for both of them.
Xiulan, in particular, was extremely shy, struggling to balance between shyness, happiness and reserve.
Until the candle goes out naturally.
"Bad guy!" Xiulan snorted softly. This guy is so hateful.
Lin Heng grinned, feeling that he was happier than a god, and said with a smile: "Call me brother."
Xiulan was scared and called out softly, "Brother, goodbye~"
"Then say something again." Lin Heng said with a wicked smile.
Xiulan obediently hugged Lin Heng's neck and kissed him, and did what he said.
They both fell asleep at some point, and when they woke up the sun was already out. Both Lin Heng and Xiulan were having trouble getting up today. Lin Heng had lower back pain, and Xiulan had leg pain.
"It's all your fault. I can't get up anyway." Xiulan glared at him and complained.
"It's okay, then don't get up." Lin Heng smiled and held her in his arms.
After a while, Xiulan crawled up and found her clothes. She pinched Lin Heng's face hard. This guy would never stay still.
After getting up, Lin Heng rested for a long time. After eating, he went to check the construction site and then rode to Shimen Village.
Zhang Lei, secretary of the Shimen Village Party Committee, saw Lin Heng's smiling face and said, "If you don't come again, I will send someone to inform you that the bluestone you ordered has been cut."
Lin Heng was a little surprised: "It's done so quickly?"
It's been less than a month, and he came here today to check on the progress.
Zhang Lei nodded: "Yes, it's ready. Come with me to check the goods. If there is no problem, you can take it away. You can pick up those broken slates at will."
Lin Heng nodded and went to Qingshi Mountain with Zhang Lei. The cut stone slabs had already been placed at the foot of Qingshi Mountain.
"Why is it fifty times one hundred? It's different from what I requested." Lin Heng said, looking at the stone slab.
Zhang Lei explained: "A one-meter by one-meter box is not easy to drive and it is not easy to transport, so we made it like this for you, and it can be used just the same.
I've given you 620 yuan here, and the extra 20 yuan is compensation."
Lin Heng didn't say anything. He took a tape measure and measured it. It was one meter long, half a meter wide, and five centimeters thick. There was no problem with the specifications, and they were all very regular.
This bluestone is different from marble. Its surface is very rough and has traces of being chiseled by steel nails.
These are all traces left by the manual stone splitting method. There was no electricity, and the stones were split manually.
The workers would first chisel a groove in the stone, and then drive steel nails in at equal distances along the groove. Each nail would be hammered in turn, with the same force, and once all the nails were hammered in, the stone would open.
This method requires a lot of skill, and the stone may rot if you are not careful. However, people with skills can also mine the stone very quickly.
The stone slabs carved out by this method cannot be as smooth as the marble carved out by industrial machines.
But Lin Heng actually likes this rough feeling very much. It has a rustic feel, and it is not easy to fall when it is laid on the ground.
Although the specifications were temporarily changed by them, they also gave him twenty more bluestones, which was reasonable.
"Okay, I'll go back now and arrange a car to pick up the stones. I'll pay you after the stones are picked up." Lin Heng said to Zhang Lei.
Zhang Lei nodded: "Sure, that's no problem, you can always contact us if you need anything else."
Lin Heng rode back on horseback, called Li Shiwei and his elder brother Lin Yue, and got three wooden carts to pull the stone slabs.
Li Shiwei drove the ox cart and shook his head, saying, "I think it's not worthwhile to use these stone slabs. Just make a cement floor. This is a waste of money."
He and Lin Heng are cousins, but their birth dates are only a few days apart, so they have always called each other by their names.
Although Lin Yue didn't say anything, he also thought so. It was a mud house, so there was no need to put a stone slab on it.
"It's not a waste of money if it makes you happy. Life is short, so there's no need to settle for where you live." Lin Heng said with a smile.
He didn't care about the one hundred and fifty dollars. Just making a cement floor would destroy the style of the ancient courtyard in his mind.
"You can be willful when you have money." Li Shiwei sighed. Seeing Lin Heng getting richer and richer, he became more motivated and more determined to make money.
Lin Heng smiled and did not respond to the teasing. Instead, he looked at his eldest brother Lin Yue and said, "Brother, you can take any broken stones here. Do you want to take some back and use them to rub the ground? I plan to use cement to harden the ground of our three homes this time."
It doesn't cost much to lay a cement floor, so he plans to help his eldest brother and his parents harden the floor of their house.
Lin Yue's eyes lit up: "If it's free, then I'll find time to move some back."
It's a good idea to take something for free, and paving the ground with stones does make it more beautiful.
After chatting all the way, the two arrived at Shimen Village in half an hour.
Li Shiwei looked at the bluestone and praised it, saying, "This stone is really good."
"Of course, otherwise I wouldn't give this price." Lin Heng smiled.
Putting on gloves, the three of them began to move the stone. This piece of stone weighed 120 to 130 kilograms and required two people to move it.
Since the road back to Hongfeng Village is mostly downhill, each car is loaded with 15 pieces, weighing more than one ton.
The three men ran six times in the morning and eight times in the afternoon before they finally brought back the good stone slabs that Lin Heng had bought.
The gravel slabs have not been pulled yet. I will wait until they are needed. You can pull them whenever you want. There are too many gravel slabs and no one wants them.
The stone slabs were moved to the outside of the two houses' yards and stacked up, and many villagers cast curious glances at them.
After learning that Lin Heng was going to renovate again, I was extremely envious. In the village, Lin Heng was the only one who had the money to do this.
The construction site at Hongfeng Mountain is in operation, but I still have the mood to do these things in the house.
At dinner, Xiulan looked at her husband who had been busy all day and asked, "Are you going to start the work in the next two days?"
Lin Heng took a bite of his meal and nodded, "Yes, we will start the work in the next few days, but we have to prepare the vegetable garden first."
Xiulan said, "Then I will help you tomorrow."
Lin Heng agreed: "Sure, I'll have my big brother and Li Shiwei to help us then, more people means faster work."
As for Red Maple Mountain, it would be enough for his father, third father, and uncle to watch over it.
The next morning, Lin Heng called his eldest brother and Li Shiwei together.
The first thing to do is to pull out all the fruits and vegetables in the vegetable garden, whether ripe or unripe.
After pulling out the weeds, he moved the dog kennels, badger pens, and musk deer pens to the back hill to make room for the front yard renovation. After finishing all this, Lin Yue looked at Lin Heng and asked, "Brother, what are you going to do next?"
Lin Heng smiled and said, "Now we need to improve the soil quality. I will start by spreading lines to outline the vegetable garden."
The previous vegetable garden was too messy and the soil was not good, so he had to replan it.
The front yard is 32 meters long from east to west and 12.5 meters wide from north to south. The north-south central axis is the corridor built previously.
The corridor is two meters wide and has only eight pairs of wooden pillars, so it does not take up much space.
The two sides of the corridor are divided into two equal parts. The total area of the entire front yard is 200 square meters, and almost 150 square meters were previously vegetable fields.
This time, Lin Heng plans to reduce the vegetable plot to 80 square meters, with 40 square meters on each side, close to the courtyard walls on both sides. He plans to build a long strip of vegetable plots that is 10 meters long and 2 meters wide. Four plots will be exactly 80 square meters, and it won't look messy if it is close to the wall.
There are only four vegetable plots in the whole yard. If there are not enough vegetables, the others can be planted in other fields outside the yard.
The main focus of the yard is beauty.
After Lin Heng laid out the outline, four people dug down thirty centimeters, shoveled out the loess and piled it outside.
After finishing these, Lin Heng said with a smile: "Let's go to the back mountain and dig some humus soil to mix it in."
"good!"
The four of them took bags and went to the back mountain to dig up the black humus soil from rotting leaves. Lin Heng also brought back a few large bags of pine needles and spread them at the bottom of the four vegetable plots.
After digging up the humus soil and mixing it with the loess, Lin Heng went to the old house and got some of the several hundred kilograms of shriveled millet picked out from this year's threshing and poured it into the soil. He then added fermented pig manure and cow dung, as well as sand dug from the sandy land and ashes from burnt wood.
Mix these seven ingredients together and evenly, and the loess that was originally easy to become compacted will become very suitable planting soil. It will be loose, breathable and fertile soil for several years to come.
Growing fruits and vegetables in this kind of soil will not only make them easier to survive, but also significantly increase their yields.
It took four people a whole day to finish the vegetable garden. Finally, they used the bluestone slabs bought by Lin Heng to surround the vegetable garden, which not only served as a division but also prevented the soil from escaping.
After all this was done, it was already dark. Li Shiwei looked at the four vegetable gardens and shook his head, saying, "This fertile stone can bloom."
Lin Heng smiled, looked at his elder brother and said, "Do you want to transform your vegetable garden like this?"
The soil he mixes is very reasonable and has been scientifically verified. Even farmers who have been farming for a lifetime cannot understand the principles behind some things and still need to learn them.
Lin Yue shook his head: "I also plan to make the vegetable field square. It's good to prepare the soil this way, but it's too troublesome. I'd better throw some cow dung when I plant it."
The main reason is that his family has planted a lot of fruits and vegetables in their fields, and it’s not easy to pull them all out.
"That's fine. Xiulan's meal is almost ready. Let's go eat." Lin Heng said with a smile.
After dinner, Lin Heng felt a little tired today, and fell asleep immediately after coaxing Xiaoxia.
The next morning, he mobilized his cousins Lin Hai and Li Shiwei to transport sand and cement from Hongfeng Mountain by horse-drawn carriage.
He and his elder brother Lin Yue leveled the ground at home. This job was a bit difficult for his elder brother, but it was a piece of cake for Lin Heng.
In his previous life, he had done all kinds of hard labor to pay off his debts, and had learned a lot of skills. Naturally, this kind of bricklayer's work was no problem for him.
Not only were the grounds of the front and back yards leveled, but the ground inside the house was also leveled. All the stones that were originally used to pave the house were taken away and piled outside the courtyard wall.
The room with furniture will be left empty temporarily until the other rooms are ready and the furniture can be moved in.
It took a whole morning to level the ground, and we started laying the stone slabs in the afternoon.
Except for a few small flower beds reserved for planting trees and flowers, the rest of the front yard is paved with stone slabs.
Li Shiwei and Lin Hai were working on the cement mortar, while Lin Heng was laying it, and his elder brother Lin Yue was helping him.
Lin Yue looked at the stone slabs laid by Lin Heng and praised: "Brother, your skills are good. They are laid beautifully."
"Yes, it looks really good." Lin Hai and Li Shiwei also nodded. They didn't expect that Lin Heng had this skill.
Although laying floor tiles seems simple, there are many details involved, and if you don’t do it right the result will be very ugly.
Lin Heng laughed: "I figured it out myself, after watching others do it."
It took four people three days to finally finish paving Lin Heng's house. A total of 220 square meters of bluestone slabs were used in the front yard and the house, and 30 square meters of bluestone slabs were used in the backyard. In the end, there were 120 pieces of bluestone slabs left.
Lin Heng did not waste these stone slabs. He built a set of stone tables and chairs in the front yard, and also made two pools, one for washing clothes and the other for storing water.
The remaining parts can also be used to make pools and water tanks for parents.
"How is it? Is the room much brighter now?" Lin Heng said as he pulled Xiulan into the yard.
Now at a glance, the house and outside are covered with neatly arranged bluestone floors, and the joints are sealed with cement. There is no trace of yellow soil or unevenness.
Xiulan nodded vigorously: "Yeah, it's beautiful and neat, and it makes me feel much better just looking at it."
Before the construction, she didn't think there was anything wrong with her house, but now she understood why Lin Heng insisted on renovating it.
The difference before and after is so huge, just looking at people makes me feel much better.
“Yeah!!”
Xiaoxia also started running in the yard. Now there was no need to worry about her tripping over stones or something, because except for the drainage ditch, the house was flat.
Seeing the smiles of his wife and daughter, Lin Heng felt a sense of accomplishment. She did all this for her wife and daughter, for her family.
Although this house is not big, it actually holds a very important place in his heart. The bad memories of his previous life are gradually filled by the good memories of this cup.
He held his wife’s hand and continued with a smile, “But this is not over yet, wait until I beat up the cement floor of my eldest brother’s and my parents’ homes.
I will buy some plaster powder and apply it on the exterior walls and the courtyard walls. Then it will be a real red tile and white wall house, which will be more beautiful and neat.”
As he spoke, Lin Heng picked up Xiaoxia who ran to him and swung her twice in the air to express his excitement.
Xiulan smiled and said, "No one will say anything about our mud house anymore."
Although it is a mud house, it is more beautifully built than any brick house in the village.
Facts have proved that even a mud house can be very beautiful if it is well decorated.
* * * ps: This chapter is a bit late, I'm sorry, but I still want to ask for monthly votes.
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
