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!

WE MOVED IN!

6 weeks and no update, I am getting worse not better, but I have a good reason as I did quite a bit while Rich went to work in the UK and didn't want to spoil his surprise.

The plan after we spoke last was to create the internal wall to give us a bedroom. We had a quick visit to Pedro our lovely building supplies guys and paid the grand total of 2 euros each pallet. Standing them ontop of each other and making strong and secure did the trick and a wall was born!

Rich popped down to buy plasterboard, which I understand is not as bad in the eco world as I thought! We covered the lounge wall in the board and I have just put fabric over the bedroom wall as we want to later insulate and need to start collecting lots and lots of newspapers to do the job! Of course I have put up pictures and other crap to make it feel more finished! It will all have to come out at some point!

Thats the bedroom side of course and its amazing sleeping in it! The breeze through the massive window is great and then the little window at the side keeps us cool at night, in fact I have to close it most nights around 3am as its bloody cold. Bet my friends living in normal houses here in Spain cant say that! lol

Love sitting in my window seat! 

The ceiling going cream I think really works, even though it took me over 4 hours of scrubbing very hard with a wire brush! Tried a new method in the lounge but did not work so looks like more hours of scrubbing to come.

Bathroom is a room we did work in whilst Rich was away. As we want to collect the water from the bath to put on the plants in the courtyard we decided to raise it up so the waste pipe is not at ground level! We got Dusty Dave back to build a wall to put the bath on! Now this did not really go to plan as when he put the bath in to decide how to make the steps he broke his brick wall! Sean had to rebuild it a few days later, we fitted bath a second time and it still broke the wall so new plan to use a wooden frame was born!

Dusty Dave and his lovely dog helping!

I love my steps and they have now made me rethink the whole design idea for the bathroom which I can not wait to get started on!

Love my stone steps, all from the land around the house

I have now bought the tiles for the bathroom walls. I really wanted to buy real limestone, however the cost would have been over 300 euros! that we just can't afford. I went to see Pedro again and he had the ones I have bought at the entrance and I think they will look the part, and he gave me a great deal, reduced from 35 euros a sqm to 10!! bargain again lol

When we had our last visit from Jose and Irene we said we wanted to wait a while before we ordered the real glass. Jose said did we have any old windows knocking around? I said no but then, when I went to sleep that night I remembered doors that we had bought for the Sella House and did not use. I am hoping Tony does not mind us borrowing them! Thanks Tony xxx

Lounge next! I have put down cheap crappy carpets all over the place as we have not done the polish on the floor yet! This is to stop the dust, or at least to keep it down. Small TV, cheap table in the window, a sofa that I found at the bins and we are in!

Plasterboard wall and my crappy carpets

I LOVE IT!!!! I can not believe how great is is to be out of the caravans.  I worked out that we managed 10 whole months living in 3 little vans, 2 that had been given to us free! The bedroom one I loved right up until the last few nights when literally I woke up hating it with a passion! But then for those that know me that's about right eh?

The dogs certainly love the dustbin sofa! 

Hmm so you think I spoil my dogs?

I also did work outside in the courtyard but I will save those photos for the next update and we have also moved the caravans closer to the house as the baby one will become my office and the bedroom one will become my workroom! I will clad them both in old pallet wood so that they look like little wooden sheds and blend into the hillside I hope.

Lovely work area close to the larder which is working well to store the fridge and shelves with food on. Cooker in the corner and adhoc units, I have moved em all around a few times to get the right layout, this is what I actually drew on the plans so very glad it works the best!

I will finish this entry today with the photo of the gift that Rich left me the morning he headed back to the UK! I have told him what he did was actually a blessing as we found out that Javi our other building supply guy owns a very large digger, the day he came to lift out Rich car he also enlarged and repaired the road which has allowed the caravans to come closer and I am hoping we can now get the large water truck up the hill and have large amounts of water at a time!

Careful Dan don't knock it over! lol

Smooth walls and real floor!

3 weeks since last post and I didn't think we had done much, but when I look at my photos I can see that actually we have done loads!

The amazing Samuel came and plastered the internal walls for us, such a skilled job and one I had decided not to do myself! Makes the place look so much bigger.

The next important leap forward was deciding to employ Dusty Dave from Rellue to lay our cement floor. He came with his old UK banger and his big black dog and worked his arse off bless him for 3 days. Sean lost count of how many mixes we did in our little mixer and Javi came with quite a few dumper trucks of material to bring up the height! You can see Dan looking so happy at helping! lol

Whacker plate time!

looking down into the bedroom, roof tinted already!

You can see below 2 different colours, (just!) we decided to use white cement in the bedroom which has 30% less nasty chemicals than normal cement. The cost is very different though, we pay around 2 euros each bag of normal gray cement and the white is nearly 7 euros a bag.

The line of old tiles will be hidden below the bedroom wall which we will build next. Then when we knock down in the future you will see the tiles again. 

nice old tiles!

I am using natural paint in the house and making it all myself, I have bought some amazing blue which I might have shown you before and also a white tint. I have coloured the wood using coffee and wanted to test some red mud that we have on the land to use on the bedroom wall.

I mixed with water and flour but the colour is not right! I want more red and this is a little brown so will head to the paint shop to buy a red tint, unless I can find something else to use.

Too brown!

Rich has worked hard getting the frame made for the glass and only today the measurements are made and he will head to the glass place to order it! That will be scary as they are not cheap. Here you can see that he has boxed in above the window with plasterboard, we need to get Samuel back to make a nice smooth finish.

Boxed in ready for plaster.

bedroom ceiling tinted

I have worked hard over the last few days finishing the cob coat in the bedroom, below is the window that we bought cheap. Rich chopped up an old piece of wood I found in the bin and we have made it into a sill! With some linseed oil it looks really posh!

If you can see an odd shape at the top its to allow the window to open more on the right!

Posh bedroom window!

Pallet wood waiting to be cut to size!

Finished cut on the left!

Seat is old scaffold board found in bin!

Rich has just turned up with the glass which will fill the gap you can see above, I do have to stain the wood first so I will be putting the kettle on to make coffee stain with linseed oil. 

The plan is the build the pallet wall between the bedroom and lounge on Wednesday which will allow us to move in, no more sleeping in the caravan! BRING IT ON!!!!!!!

Why is it all so slow now?

Its been an odd start to the month and things don't seem to have moved that fast! The jobs are now time consuming and at the end of day I am truly knackered! Rich has been guiding for nearly 3 weeks so has had a break from the house, I will make sure he works extra hard over the next few days to make up for it!

My mum came over and helped to do the final gravel cover on the roof, this is only until we get a tad more money to then use the wood insulation, make a wood gutter and cover with bags of earth! Lets hope we get it done for the Gota Fria in September or the gravel will be washed away!

We are trying hard to cover all the bales with mud, but its painfully slow as the first layer goes on, I am looking forward to when we can wack it on quicker with tools and not hands. 

I started to paint the beams with a wash of the mud, I am not too keen on the yellow look of the pine and this will make the house lighter! I leave the mud to make a paste in water, then brush on, leave to dry and then brush off with a wire brush, the wood grain still shows which I like. 

One good that has happened lately is the joiner William coming to make some door frames and to finish the wood work needed around the front window! With door frames now in place it means we can get the plasterer in to plaster the internal walls. I know I said I would do it myself but it is taking me so long to do the mud render I do not have the energy and I am sure it will take him one day and I would take 5! Fingers crossed the next blog entry will have photos of nice internal walls!

Sean today built the basewall that will support the internal wall for the bedroom, this I am excited about as then I can work hard on one room and get it finished! This will also act as a divide when we start to lay the cement floor on Monday. That is another giant leap forward and we have employed someone to help. I didnt want cement on the floor but we are buying white not gray which is better eco wise and the finish might be good enough without having to put down tiles! We will see!

One nice surprise today was stood higher in front of the kitchen window I saw the view for the first time! Not bad if I say so myself!

Roof on, Oranges leave!

Its been a funny old month, Simon returned for a week to do more wood work, the roof went on and most of my winter "Oranges" left :-(

Simon worked hard on making a support for what I call the umbrella ceiling. A great big giant timber support that will help to spread the weight of the beams on the internal brick wall. I will sand down a tad and give it a coat of teak oil to match the roof ones!

The wood will change colour as I am not keen on the swiss chalet look, I can't decide to go dark or light so I am about to start doing some test sections in the larder as that ceiling will be covered so I can play as much as I like till I find a stain/shade I want.

I love this feature!

Simon also took some old doors that I had removed from The Orange House years ago and kept for this house, we knew we had them to use so the frame had already been made to fit them!

Kitchen sink, a tad heavy!

I am very excited when I show people around the house and am able to tell them what we are using to save money. 

7 Windows 400 euros taken from a house up the coast saving us a small fortune. 

6 internal solid wood doors bought second hand paid 100 euros for the lot! bargain or what!

Brick floor tiles for the larder, free from a ruin around the corner!

External door free from Orange House

Bath free taken from Orange House

Glass shower panel, found in the bins, amazing!

Plasterboard needed for internal walls, yes the bins again!

Sink from Sella house left in the garden

Larder sink

Kitchen sink second hand 10 euros!
Tiles for the bathroom taken from a skip as display boards, some of the tiles cost 58 euros each!

Kitchen tiles free from a skip!

I will do a complete list of costings when the house is finished, I have nothing to hide and am very proud of the money saved. The more money we have the more mouths we can feed as this week we said welcome to 6 baby turkies and 2 baby budgies!

We had our first party at the house to say goodbye to James, Sam, Ed and Rob. To say thanks to Mel, Sean, Juan Carlos and Simon for all the help with this project.

 I do feel blessed actually that we have had some many amazing people all help us. This next bit is a bit hippy but I do feel that the house has a special feel and that is due to the love and kindness that has gone into the build process. Even a good friend who is soooooo NOT in touch with his "special side" said he also felt a calmness, I better not name him as his dog will think he has gone soft! 

Hmm fire in a strawbale house!

Grandad Richard!

The long term plan for the roof is the tongue and groove as the base layer, this is what is exposed when you look up on the inside. Then on top the next layer is 100% natural wood fibreboard. This is not cheap and not that easy to source. Then EPDM which is a natural waterproof membrane, again this is not cheap but we know that we can buy this locally. Then bags filled with topsoil from the land third filled and layed flat. The bags are made from Jute and in time with will degrade and the seeds in the soil will start to grow.

Well that was the plan, but life being life, we have to change it for a while as we have ran out of money. As you can see on the photo below we have a fast and easy solution to get us through the summer and until we can get some more money into the pot!

We have used loads of plastic sheeting fastened to the timber and then all the gravel that we bought already for the floor has gone on top. This has already made a difference inside the house and made it feel cooler. 

We put the plastic down to help stop any water of course, but the main concern we had was the sun and heat damaging the tongue and groove. As the gravel is white it should reflect the sun back up and keep the wood protected. Keep your fingers crossed folks and remind me when we get close to Gota Fria time that we need to get it all sorted properly!

After Simon left Rich was excited to be given permission from me to put the last of the bales in the walls. Now it does mean that I should be spending all my spare time covering the straw with mud but I never seem to get a minute to do anything! It also means that we can measure the glass and get it in! Now that bit will be mega exciting as the house will then be watertight.

Kitchen walls with wires on show for now!

.

Kitchen wall end

As I was down taking these photos today the horses came up for a drink of water. I am so pleased that we will be able to sit and enjoy them coming so close to the house.

Yes they are close, just the way we want it!