Darkest week so far!!!!

I last posted in August after a lazy summer and I imagined the next post would be all the goods things that have been achieved and how nice it is to be back to normal temperatures and best of all more workers to help us get a tad closer to finishing!

I will start with the positives and some photos of some lovely bits that are getting very close to the final push!

Bedroom - well what a bloody horrible job to get the floor smooth and finished! Rich started the process first and after really a few seconds the room was full of cement dust and impossible to see anything at all! Simon had brought over a small diamond cutter to fit onto a small and normal grinder so we knew its was going to be a long job but not as bad as it got!

One week looking like this! 

Rich had a go a few times having a sand for maybe 15 mins and then having to leave the room, I had an idea of using a spray bottle at the same time to keep the dust down. that helped a little but not enough! Rich got pissed off and said he had had enough. I don't blame him bless, but that did mean that I would have to take over!

I started the same way and after half an hour realised it was impossible, I am not sure if Simon said to use water or not, and I did not look on you tube like I normally do so have no idea what happened next but I just opened the spray bottle and chucked the whole of the water in the floor, fired up the sander and went for it!

Phew!!!!! it worked like a dream, no dust and amazing smooth finish. Rich entered the room a few hours later and got all excited and started to help me. He wet in the areas I was heading and between us we managed to finish the room in 2 days!

Then I started the slow process of painting 7 coats of linseed oil onto it! I was amazed how water proof the floor became very quickly. Also when you read on, you will see how it really did work when water came pooring in the window a few months later.

Nice shining floor, grit sanded down looks ok! I even took a photo of a dog hair for you! 

Love finished bedroom! Like a little place to hide in!

Pallet wood treated with linseed!

To give the room its final finish we painted both walls in a lovely pale purple and we treated all the wood again with linseed. I do love my bedroom window so much and all the wood used the room was free as all found in the bins. The mud walls are painted white with talc that smells lovely and flour, yes normal plain flour, makes a great cover for all the little cracks!

I painted some old mis matched furniture in the purple as a wash and used wax afterwards for a shabby chic look. TB mounted on the wall and new rug down and it really is a finished room and at the moment my very favorite place to be!

Cheap furniture painted and waxed! 

Afternoon sun comes through the stained glass window and is very special!

Bathroom - Rich really did a great job using old pallet wood on the walls and he made a really lovely mirror frame! I about finished with the tiling and have just about finished the grouting! White gloss on the beams in here to allow more light to bounce around as it is a dark room! Only the pipes to box in and a few more tiles on the bath and in here will be all done! Room number 2!

Rich making skirting boards from pallet wood!

Cheap pretend limestone tiles and Rich pallet wall painted with watered down white paint and then waxed!

Rich made me a super nice wooden frame for a piece of glass I pinched from a skip!

White ceiling to bounce the light down as its dark room! Shelf to put stuff on when taking a shower!

Hiding the caravans well underway using pallet wood! Rich office and my office will very soon be invisible from the road and we will look less like a gypsy campsite. The large van very soon will be moved down on the arena and hidden from view.

Rich caravan with its coat to make it invisible from the road! it really works just my little one to do the same and then move the large one down below! 

We had a great team of workers who had a massive push of mud making and managed to get the 2 end walls covered! Just the back courtyard now and then try to source some lime to add to the final coat to make it water proof!

Workers back! yippee! Craig and Harry same as last year.....

Sad thing number one was saying goodbye to Irene and Jose the 2 wonderful architects, without these two we would never have started this project and we will miss them! What I didn't realise was, that to have us as an open project for this length of time looked bad for them! It had not even entered my head that it is a full TWO years since we employed them and we drew out the white lines for the house.

If anyone had said it would still be so unfinished after a whole 2 years I really would have got angry and said "no way". I think we would have found another solution maybe and not been so eco. However doing it this way means that we do have an amazing house build with so much love and laughter and that I suppose is worth wait!

STORM DAMAGE!

September, just at the start of the month we had the normal what they call Gota Fria, big heavy rains in one small space of time on dry, dry land! So we have floods etc. This year was bad as we had a months rainfall in 2 days! We didn't suffer too much really and as a surprise to us both the roof did not leak too bad! A few rock falls near the horse area but nothing too bad.

wet wet and more wet!

Normal car park! so lucky I moved em!

Another lucky break as this is where the horses stand! 

So you can imagine then at the end of October we really didn't expect it all to happen again! It was forcast to start on the Thursday night at 11pm and it really did. I was stupid and ordered way too much hay which we tried to cover as best we could! I had a few buckets out to catch the water so I thought I was ready!

What a bloody night, I think I read that we had 2 months rainfall in 3 hours and we really did suffer this time. No idea why but we put the cars in a different place as we would have lost one I think to the stone wall which came down!

Horses lucky not to get hurt as the wall above them went for a slide down the hill! The worst area was in the courtyard as the clay wall decided it was the right time to give up and fall into the area right next to the back door, Falling on all the plants and making a right mess at the back door. Dogs running in and out with muddy feet like you would not believe! Poor little pig needed rescuing as the mud turned to clay and she could not walk!

Little pig standing next to the floor that is falling away from the hillside, can you just see a crack! 

Terrace gone under the solar panels which took out the wall below and moved water containers and buried the cables to solar system! So all this mud and mess and no power from system. Fixed a week later and we think it was a lightening strike that damaged something!

Well I think that's it and surely that's enough! I am not going to mention the damage down at The Orange House and leaks and unhappy clients and staff but I can say that last week was the worst to-date by a mile and one I really don't want to repeat!

I will end with a happy photo though as I do love this house so much and things can only get better!? Yeh?

EXACTLY TWO YEARS AGO TODAY!!!!!!!!!

Summer of doing diddly squat! nada! nothing!

When I read back to the last post in March I am a little sad that not much has changed since then! I had such great plans to do lots of inside jobs during the summer months when The Orange House was closed to climbers and I would spend all my time up here! Oh how wrong was I?

We did manage to put up some shelves to display books and things over the top of the old army maps we had been given. Using more pallets and wine cases, you can't see in the photos but the wood has writing on and is all different colours! No one really likes my handmade puppets but me! lol

Pallet shelves

May saw Rich and I drive back to the UK for our annual visit, never a dull trip back anyways, but his time we took the horse box to bring back a new pony to add to the herd! So that was May with nothing done!

New boy Dooley

June came and went with a flying visit from Simon our wood guru and he was able to help a little bit and we have a nice new wooden seat for the bucket toilet.

We also managed to get some sheet metal FOC of course and we already had a shower tray from The Orange House so an outdoor shower was fashioned! Rich does like to shower in his garden, and after a bit of digging, a trench will take the water around the front of the house and will water the mound at the front to try and get plants to grow and stabilize the soil!

Trench for water to slope!

 

Outdoor shower!

Posh bucket hider!

June also saw our wedding anniversary party and Rich birthday, so another month that we did very little! The only job we did manage to do, was to plant some lovely trees and shrubs that people bought us for our wedding anniversary gifts. The tyres around the front of the house will be covered in mud and painted to match the house!

The happy couple after 11 years!

OK, so lets get busy in July before we head on holiday to Bulgaria! What a stupid idea, way too hot to even work inside so we end up hibernating. I had said last year that I did not want to spend another summer here in Spain, but until the heat hits you again you forget just how horrible it can be.

The trip to Bulgaria was great and we did buy a small house with a large garden with a stream running through the bottom! I can see another blog starting to follow the madness over there!

We have been back a month and still very little done! We have just taken the bed out of the bedroom so that we can start to try and polish the floor and finish the painting, staining in there! Rich has also started to clad the walls in the bathroom with more pallet timber so that maybe we can get 2 rooms finished!

Bed in the lounge, like a cozy bedsit! 

Empty bedroom ready to start the floor! 

Its Sunday morning, I am drinking great Spanish coffee and still in my famous purple fluffy pajamas! I am sitting in my brand new window seat and watching the ponies chomping away! Life really does not get much better than this! I feel very, very blessed!

So what have we been doing since my last blog! Loads and loads actually and I feel as if we might be on the home stretch!

We had some great Oranges during January and we cracked on with making mud, mud and more mud. We managed to completely cover the whole of the front of the house, it does need a tad more fine finishing to fill the cracks etc, but from the road it is great to look up and as we are leaving it the same colour as the mud it kind off disappears into the hillside.

No more straw or timber on view!

We also managed to mud in the kitchen, again a little finish coat to sort out the cracks etc and I think we are ready to get the electrician in to give us lights and power sockets.

Daisy having breakfast in nearly finished kitchen.

In the lounge we covered the pallet wall in maps that an MOD group left me last year. The plan is then to use old wood, pallets, wine cases etc to make shelves. The shelves will then house books and ornaments all made to measure. Will help to block out noise to the bedroom we hope.

Map wall

Wine cases and pallet ends with colour and words

For a long time we have been dicing with death on a pallet ladder to feed the pigs and chickens. Well last week a team of 3 oranges made me some tyre steps! so amazing to be able to run up and down and not risk breaking our necks, It also starts to look more tidy around the outside of the house. We still have some crap to shift but we are trying to keep it all in one place.

Pig steps

Doggie pen ready for fencing

Rich made a great battery store room

Rich built a lovely little battery store and you can see the water tanks on the terrace above. The pressure is just enough to fire up the boiler so we now have hot water. We had our first bath on Valentines day and another leap forward to normal living. Buckets in the courtyard for now but we are digging a tank that will hold the bath water and then a solar pump will then keep the plants in the back garden watered. It does means we will need to only use natural products but thats a good thing.

Green shed in new position! second time though.....

Can you see the green metal shed in the photo above? Well that was on the top terrace and then we moved it down next to the house before Christmas. At the time I think I remember the boys saying it needed securing, but as with many things it gets left to another day. I really wish we had not done that! lol

During January the whole of Spain suffered from gusts of winds up to 100km per hour! Can you guess where this story is going? 4am and we are awake for the second night running, chairs, buckets and many other things all blowing around the land. Rich says " I wonder how the shed is doing" I get my headtorch on and head out to check. I come back to bed and say "yeh, not sure how but its still in place and the horses do not seem too bothered by it all bless em". The dogs however are not happy and we end up with them all on the bloody bed!

Maybe only 20 mins later we hear an almighty crash and we know what has happened! Both jump out of bed and head outside. The shed is made of metal and it literally lifted up in the air and flew across the terrace to land on the horse fence! We grab as muny heavy things, rocks etc as and place them on the now very flat shed hoping the wind will drop a tad and that they will stay in place. The shelves inside the shed are still in place which now looks very odd! Back to bed to try and sleep and check the damage in the daylight.

I am leaving the best items till last and we had another visit from Simon our joiner and very good friend. The plan was the at last get the glass in the window frame. Rich had measured the spaces and ordered the glass from a company in Calpe, we had been quoted over 1200 euros from the local glass place but found this company online and the final price was only 600. Bargain!

Simon arrived on the Sunday and Monday was planning day, Tuesday was D day and I had a meeting at the townhall so had to trust it all to the boys! I came back at lunchtime and walked into the house to see the glass in place and 3 happy faces, I could tell it had not been easy and Rich looked a tad knackered!

Had we had TV cameras with us, at this stage people would say this was all staged as I looked out of the glass and noticed the words of the glass company in the top corner, NOT down the bottom where it should be. I turn to the boys and say "you do know that has to be changed" Rich says no way, Simon stays quiet to see if I will change my mind and leave the words up top!

"Sorry boys but I can not live with it like that so you have to take em out and do it again" I stand and try to help while they take out 2 pieces and turn one upside down and place back in the frame. I am so glad I got back in time before they did the final fixing in place, I bet the boys wish I had been around the whole morning, but it makes for a great story!

Pallet again as side supports, need sanding in the future

Not a bad view whilst writing this blog entry! 

Once Simon had finished the windows I had one more task for him, which I think he enjoyed. I had bought a cheap little corner sink for the bathroom which I wanted to be in a little cupboard next to the bath.

I had no idea he would make us something so super cool! I am sure this is my favorite piece of pallet use so far, just need to get the rest of the brick work covered to match. If you look at the floor you can see that we have started to lay hand made clay tiles which we "rescued" from a local ruin! We have used mud to put them on the floor instead of cement or tile adhesive. They seem to be sitting really well and I am hoping might be a tad warmer underfoot!

Metal ring found in the ground used as a towel holder

Clay bricks on the floor

Handle found in shed so all free or reclaimed materials

House really does feel amazing to live in, I am sure we will keep working for months, but the windows make a massive difference. Simon is due back in June and then we hope to have all the materials to finally finish the roof and get the porch done! Bring on the Spring.....

2015 already!

Now I made excuses last time for not posting for a while, but this is crazy! I have not added anything since JULY! what an earth have we been doing?

The main thing that slowed us down was the intense heat during August and September, just made you want to sit in the shade and do nothing, The house did prove how the thickness off the walls will work as inside felt cool compared with outside and placing the small bedroom window towards the gap in the valley did just what we wanted it to. In fact even in the middle of the summer months we had to close the window at around 4am as the breeze made us too cold!

We had a quick visit in September from Irene and Jose to talk roofs! So of course we had to invite Simon back over. We had used the gravel and plastic during the summer months which worked great against the sun, but when it started to rain we had problems! drip drip drip on my head only, how come that always happens, Rich just sleeps through it and I had to go sleep on the bloody sofa.

Horse head on the roof

The boys removed the plastic and gravel and we then started with the wood that will create the gutter. We still have no money so we had to then put on new plastic with no holes this time and back down with the gravel. When it did rain again no leaks and drips so well done guys! Lets just hope that we get some pennies soon so that we can pay for the real stuff that we need.

"oranges" a plenty, all helping with the mudding!

Oranges started to some back in October so we did start again with the mudding! I had forgotten just how long it takes, even with 12 massive buckets we can still only cover small amounts of wall. I have no idea when I can say that we will have done this job, I am going to make a guess now at May. I do hope I am wrong but hmmm lets just see.

Normal hands covered in mud!

In November we had loads of Oranges and we took the scaffolding back in the kitchen, much to Richards protests, as he hates not been able to get to his cooker properly.  That at least allowed us to get more mud on the walls and finally cover all internal straw and one big job that I didnt want to finish was to taint the beams with the mud to take away the yellow colour that I hate so much.

I also used some tiles I had bought years ago to make a window sill. They are just sitting in mud, not sure if it will stay strong but time will tell I suppose.

Window sill made from handmade tiles!

I also decided to do more work in the larder and make it more useable. All the shelfs on the wall and from old wardrobes that someone had put at the bins, the tiled worktop is using old tiles I had left over from The Orange House. The tiled backsplash is the tiles I took from the skips last year and the fabric I have had around 20 years in a box. I dont think anything in this room was actually bought new, even the double sink is second hand.

Larder with sink full of washed dishes! 

As I had done the mud on the ceiling I could then paint the brick walls and start to put up some of my art work to make it more like home, TV mounted on the wall and a nice second carpet and the sofa that we all love is back in place and the lounge now feels like my home.

Starting to feel like a real home! 

We had been using a paraffin heater that we had bought last year for the caravans, they work great but the fuel is quite expensive and we have lots of left over bits of wood, from the house frame and from the pallets that we have used for various tasks. Much better to not spend any money and to make the area more tidy as the wood gets burnt! Rich did moan when I came back from the car boot sale a few weeks ago with a tiny little burner. Only 10 euros bargain! We did have to spend money on pipes and chimney though but that will pay for itself in no time.

As soon as we lit it Rich was impressed and now we love it very much, so do the dogs as you can see. Prince the boxer just stands infront for ages in a trance!

Prince enjoying the new burner, he just sits and stares at it! 

I will do another update next week with more work we have done outside and hopefully I will have done a little bit more mud work!