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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Map wall |
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| 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.
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| Pig steps |
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| Doggie pen ready for fencing |
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| Pallet again as side supports, need sanding in the future |
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| 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!
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| Metal ring found in the ground used as a towel holder |
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| Clay bricks on the floor |
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| 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.....
