A house is built by the mastoras or
master builder
and two or three assistants, the
mason
who dresses large surfaces and carves the decorative elements, the
plasterer
and his mates, and the
carpenter
who constructs the roof-beams, floor, doors and windows.
The walls of traditional houses are 50cm thick and are constructed by two builders working simultaneously, one on either side of the wall. For reasons of economy, the mortar used is mud rather than lime and sand.
The builders need to be experienced and the stones must be joined well, with the aid of many small stone wedges. Mud is used to fill in the cracks, preventing insects and reptiles from nesting in the wall.
When construction is complete, the interior walls are plastered with an underlayer of lime, large-grained sand and finely-chopped hay, followed by a top layer of fine sand and lime. Until the Turkish occupation all houses were also plastered on the outside. Due to the island’s economic decline, exterior plastering was then restricted to the mortaring around each stone.
The roof, which is always flat with a slight declination towards the drains, is supported by thick cypress trunks, covered with canes carefully tied together. On top of the canes is a thick layer of bushes, which are covered in turn by 10-15 cm of earth. The earth is covered with a layer of 3-5 cm of pounded clay each autumn to waterproof it.
| 
