15° in Nadadouro  11° in Portreath

This is a thank you to my lovely friends Sally and Keef, who came to visit us the other day.  We marched them around our build and expressed our vision.  They lifted our hearts and made them sing.  Gave us encouragement and love and made me realise just how much I really miss their smiling faces.

Thanks for coming to visit us in Portugal lovelies.  We had a splendid time in the sun, come back soon x

The build is progressing so fast now I just can't seem to catch up.  Yesterday another layer of the terrace was completed, a thick concrete screed.  Downstairs in the extension they are doing the same, suddenly all the pipes are disappearing and it's starting to look like a real house!

An exciting weekend to come.  We're off to our first Portuguese wedding.  Congratulations Jewelz and Johnny, you're made for each other x

26° in Nadadouro  14° in Portreath

About two weeks ago we had a torrential downpour.  For a few days in a row, within a 20 minute slot, when it started to rain it didn't stop until every last drop in the cloud was squeezed.  As you can imagine the ground around here is always rock hard, so all that excess water found every possible place to go.  This was our turn to discover the perils of floods.  As I waded through our soggy basement, I thanked the powers that be for flooding now before all our lovely floor was down [ever the optimist].  So after another site meeting we were told that the water was coming from under the ground and wasn't run off.  Now I think I did mention the idea of bottling our spring [well] water and making a small fortune as the next best thing to Evian, but not with the spring under my lounge!  Thankfully the engineer and constructor were already on the case and a solution has been found.  Plastic.  Now this really made Dave smile, as all along he's been carrying the torch for a good thick sheet of plastic to prevent moisture intrusion, and now his want will be reality.  A tragedy narrowly averted.

Not only did our house flood, but so did our rental - twice!  For some reason the rainwater [thank god that's all it was] decided to fill our bathroom too!  I had my wellies on inside and out in May!

So back to the project.  Antonio and Pedro have skimmed most of the upstairs walls.  They look fantastic, really, really smooth.  Chico and Rui are methodically rendering the outside walls.  It is such a craft, I really appreciate the effort they are putting into it.  Seeing those guys carefully smoothing the render as if icing a cake.

The windows are due in about a month, so before then the underfloor heating will be installed and then we [yes us!!] have to tile about 100 square metres of floor.  This has to be done before the stairs or the kitchen can be put in.

I just can't believe there's only a couple of months to go x

22° in Nadadouro  12° in Portreath

Since my last post our house now has
new walls inside and out
central heating tails and the woodburner installed
limestone door and window sills
first fix electrics and plumbing
structures in walls for our toilets and bidets
a barbecue area
2 new chimneys - nearly a three
and the mound of rubble out the back is nearly touching our new terrace!

The rubble mound [actually i think this is the third one!] has been carted there by our labourer Alchide so we've aptly renamed it Mount Alchide in his honour.  All of our builders are the nicest guys you could ever care to meet on a building site, polite, smiley and working like Trojans.

I suppose because most of the ladies around here are older [polite] and take to wearing their nylon pinafores all the time [don't ask], the boys seem less boorish than their British counterparts.  Yesterday I counted 15 of them doing a kind of builder dance around the place, getting on with the task at hand and being meticulous at the same time.  I can't praise them highly enough.  If you are ever planning a build around here call Jose Capinha, our civil engineer and Sergio Costa the constructor.

Last night around the dinner table we discussed whether we would contemplate doing this again.  It's NO if we have to live elsewhere and not be at home, but a resounding YES if we can design, plan and build from the comfort of Nadadouro.

Dave and I are taking it in turns to stress out about what's going on.  Last night it was Dave's turn to lie awake for hours planning this and that and worrying about the same too.  Our heads are so full we're going to need this lovely house to recoup!  x

29° in Nadadouro  17° in Portreath

Phew!  The temperature's rising all over europe, at last!  With that our house is now taking another leap forward.  We met a really nice smiley guy called Rodrigo, who introduced himself as our plumber.  After a while of marking fittings for our showers and taps etc on walls, he swapped hats and became our sparky!  Now although we were confident about the light/socket placement, it suddenly felt over the top to point every couple of metres and exclaim that we want another electrical outlet there!

Another burning desire we had was to have a vaulted ceiling upstairs in the new house, but really thought we couldn't afford it!  How lovely to find out that for a small amount more we could have our dream realised!

We're continually thinking about our budget and it is giving me palpitations, but hey let the cheques roll.  Today we purchased our sanitaryware!  We've managed to source a carpenter to make us a front door and i think next week it's decision time on the windows.

I have a feeling we'll be in before we know it x

13° in Nadadouro  8° in Portreath

After posting about the wood pile last night I thought i should give you an updated photo.  It's about 2m high, good eh.

And we've had the hole cut out for our new fire.  Aren't builders great.  Good work lads x

15° in Nadadouro  11° in Portreath

Things are suddenly moving on.  Firstly the kitchen fitter appeared and chalked up the places for the water, gas and electricity to go.  Hooray, i just can't believe it.

Today we met with the heating engineer, Tim, who is going to install our solar heating system.  At last something eco to think about inbetween all that concrete!  We have a woodburner and solar panels attached to a large water tank to supply all our hot water.  We've chosen a great double sided woodburner, which should power the underfloor and central heating, practical as well as looking rather yummy too.

My Dave has had his lumber jack head on ever since we've moved to Portugal. Look at our fantastic wood pile - we won't be feeling any icy chills next winter, that's for sure  x

13° in Nadadouro  9° in Portreath

I saw this lovely print from another blog i follow, and it just seemed so right to give to my Dave to celebrate our 2 years strong.  2 years is our cotton anniversary, not only is this printed on 100% cotton rag paper, the artist is Canadian.

I think it really suits us x

Love by Helen Dardik