So, stage one is essentially over – the main fabric of the house is completed. and from these photos taken in January we have come a fair way in six months:
But we have more immediate concerns. Having been totally ensconced in the structure of the house we have temporarily forgotten the veggie patch. And now we have discovered lots of it needs eating. Namely: Tomatoes, cucumbers, broad beans, french beans, borlotti beans, runner beans, courgettes, chillies, aubergines, lettuces, onions, garlic, cabbages, spinach, carrots, turnips, sweetcorn and we even think the brussel sprouts are ready. Three months ahead of schedule.
Meanwhile the celery, rhubard, currents of various hues, artichokes, asparagus and lord knows what else is on its way. Needless to say one of the rooms that needs seeing to now is the pantry and some storage needs to be created.
Well, this will be our third night in the house and I must say the novelty still hasn’t worn off. It still feels fantastic to wake up in our new bed and gaze out over the garden. Jackie’s favourite activity is to have a shower – as she designed the bathroom and loves the fact that the water is solar heated and despite the cool nights is still hot first thing in the morning.
Many people have asked us,”Now the house is finished, what are you going to do?”. Well, as well as our two podcasting sites and looking after the veggie patch there is plenty still to do on the house.
The big things like the barn, patio and the area in front of the french windows can wait for now. Our immediate priorities are more basic – like cleaning the floors – I think this will be a continuous chore as dust accumulates daily and simply won’t go away. We also actually need to unpack. It has been great to discover things from almost a year ago like all our carpets and knick knacks. But we need to find and create space for them. i.e. build shelves and find places for all our stuff. As we asked the builders to paint everything white we have also selected a few walls for a splash of colour which we will do ourselves. Anyway, there is plenty to do so no time for idle chit chat.
As you can see from the photos below, the place is transformed (again) but still needs lots of work..
loungeloungekitchen
And all seems to be well in the redstart nest in the old postbox. Unfortunately for the second brood only one chick hatched but here he/she is almost ready for take off.
PS For those interested in the garden goings on. The courgettes are still in full flow but now the squashes/pumpkins are coming on and we had our first tonight – delicious. And the cucumbers are starting to take over as well – not your boring green ones (although we do have those as well) our main crop are cricket ball sized and yellow and delicious. Oh and the tomatoes and onions are also with us – so we are pretty much self sufficient in veggies now.
We are just coming to terms with the fact that tonight will be our first in Casa Azul. Today we have been scrubbing floors, unloading boxes and trying to give directions in Portuguese for the delivery men who came with our new furniture (the bed upon which we will be sleeping tonight!!). We are exhausted but had a mini celebration of champagne on the threshing square followed by a barbeque with a difference – the difference being we don’t have to pack up and go to our rented house. The difference also being I am updating this blog from our sofa while J does the dishes (double bonus!!) – actually she’s now in our solar powered shower.
Too excited to sleep but too tired to do anything but drink red wine and listen to music – heaven!
But we realise it is far from finished – unpacking and then clearing up the huge amount of detritus in the courtyard followed by more unpacking, then there is shelving, paving, strimming etc etc etc.
However CASA AZUL/BRANCA is now (almost) finished and welcoming guests. Come on down!!!!!!
At long last the windows have arrived and they only actually took a couple of days to fit. Now we are waiting for the final piece – the carpenter and the front door!! -Oh and the iron man needs to sort out the grills for the upstairs bedrooms and the spiral staircase and the electrician needs to fit the solar panel and install the boiler and and… Anyway, the builder assures us it will now be a matter of days rather than weeks. We still refuse to count chickens but here are the latest photos.
As we edge ever closer to completion, every day brings joy and disappointment in equal measure. Mainly the saga about the windows and doors. The manufacturers say they are almost ready, the builder that they won’t be ready for a while. One says the 6 July the other 11 July. Why are those few days the difference between hope and despair? Also the electrician/plumber promised that the heating/plumbing/electricity would be finished today, but as I type, the site stands silent.
Except of course for the birds and another little saga, a good one this time. Remember the little redstarts that nurtured their brood in the old postbox? Well they are back again for brood number two and I was lucky enough to see the first egg hatch. I even caught it on video while I was recording the latest update:
A few photos:
Meanwhile of course the garden goes full steam ahead. In fact, the courgettes are more like runaway trains. We can’t eat them fast enough and we can’t give them away. Every day at least one needs picking. We wanted to give some to our neighbours and the workmen but they all refused. As everyone round here grows their own food everyone has loads of courgettes! We have let one of them grow into a marrow and it is enormous. We are going to give it the chop tonight and have stuffed marrow.
deep in thought behind the courgettes wondering what to do with them all
In addition to courgettes we are in a similar situation with the plums. We have one tree loaded with yellow ones and another with much fewer (but if anything more delicious) red ones. In addition to making plum jam, plum jelly and plum cordial, Jackie has rather ingeniously made some plum and courgette chutney.
In other veggie news the sweet corn has now grown beyond my height and nears 2 metres. Broad beans are finally ready and we have loads and loads of toms starting to redden. Oh and the handyman has managed to cobble together an air dryer from an old pallet – for converting some of those plums into prunes amongst other things.
plums
We are also about to receive our first guest. Sarah, who now lives in Paris, but whom we knew from Jordan, is on her way. She is due next Friday, 9th July. As she is only staying a few days, it will be a close run thing to see whether she gets to actually stay a night in the new house. Can’t wait to see you Sarah!
A new name may be required for the house (and the blog!) as it’s been painted completely white and the last of the azul (blue) has gone.
The inside is also white as shown by this photo of the master bedroom.
master bedroom
The bathroom is also changing. The tijolo vidros (glass bricks) have been installed into the shower.
bathroom
Next up the spiral staircase and the plumber has promised that the central heating and plumbing will be completed next week (maybe).
Another vid of the house as promised. Plenty of changes since last time including the fact that most of the tiling is done now. The kitchen and bathroom now are recognisable as such. Apparently the painters will be in this week and the doors, windows and spiral staircase are getting made. We edge ever closer…
First up another video. (also see links right – Pages on ‘Casa Azul’, then videos). It was taken over three weeks ago so I am a bit tardy putting it up but I thought ‘what the hell’. Also, I’ve noticed the place looks a lot different now, so I’m going to have to get back down there to make another one – which will feature fully tiled rooms and an almost complete bathroom! Can you contain your excitement? As a taster here is the freshly tiled living room and tiled bedroom.
loungebedroomnotice newly cleared area in front of house
bbq area
I am now counting the days (weeks??) until I get sick of courgettes as our four plants are going crazy and threatening to take over the veg patch. I thought bamboo was the fastest growing plant – this has been superseded by our triffids. Every time I turn my back a new green cigar has appeared and is ready for plucking.
courgettes aka triffids
Have you also checked out the ‘Recipe’ page? Jackie has put up a recipe for elderflower cordial which is great. We are also waiting for a batch of elderflower champagne to mature – hopefully the bottles won’t explode which is apparently a common occurrence. The elderflowers are almost finished but I expect there are plenty of them in UK at the moment. Although our cherries have almost all been taken by the birds, curiously there are two trees on an empty patch of land next door which are laden with the things. We’ve already had a delicious cherry clafouti (note to Jackie: get the recipe up on the blog) and have also experimented in making a kirsch which should be ready in a month or two. Meanwhile, our entire redcurrant crop was eaten in five minutes.
redcurrants
As we have about a dozen raspberries, methinks they will go the same way. Just wait till next year!
Well maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but over the last week there have been visible changes to the house. In addition to plastering all the interior walls the men are finishing off the exterior and all the floors have been cemented ready for tiling. Also the units in the bathroom and kitchen are being made and they are waterproofing the flat roof. And they are finally getting rid of the builder’s rubble lying outside the house. All this is being done by an expanded workforce of up to 7 men rather than the usual 2 who have done the majority of the work.
In addition we have also had the carpenter round who will do all the interior doors and the blacksmith who will be making the spiral staircase and the grills on the upstairs windows. It seems that our continued earbashing of the builder is finally paying dividends!
lounge with cemented floor and plastered walls and ceilingkitchen unitsbuilder's rubble is finally disappearing and the surrounds to the windows are finished
Meanwhile the veggie patch is benefiting from a week of all out sun. We’ve had some carrots and I was amazed at how much tastier they were to bought ones. The salad leaves continue to sprout and Jackie even managed to leave a few strawberries for me. The beans and peas are coming through as well.
Compare the picture below to the one from the post on 21st April.
Given that there is so much action on the house at the moment (adding to the noise is a lot of pneumatic drilling to get rid of a few pesky big rocks outside the French windows) it is surprising that a couple of Black Redstarts have built a nest in the old letter box. Well actually they built the nest a few weeks ago. Well now the eggs have hatched and there are 4 fluffy chicks inside. We were a bit worried that all the noise would disturb them but they seem to have thrived. Here’s two of them waiting to be fed.
two chicks in the old letterbox
I think I mentioned a while ago that two wrens were building a nest on the balcony at our rented house. I think I neglected to mention that our adopted cats managed to grab and eat one, right in our living room :-(. However, two more must have moved in or the widow(er) found a new partner as the new couple have also managed to rear four chicks and these have recently been seen flying in and out of their tiny nest.
We’ve got video footage of the redstarts which you can see on the video page.
The reassuring sound of drilling has resumed at the house. Yes, the builders have returned. We’ve also got the plumber on site and together they are knocking out holes, drilling through walls and digging up floors to lay various pipes for the electricity and plumbing. This will also include central heating and solar powered water heating. The solar heated water is certainly not for economic reasons as it won´t pay for itself for many years but it is something which we always wanted to do.
Of course, work continues on the garden. In addition to the spuds, carrots, onions, leeks etc, Jackie has now planted out beans, peas, cucumbers, courgettes, squash, tomatoes, turnips, broccoli and goodness knows what else. I must say apart from a minor slug attack on the baby rhubarb the whole crop has been remarkably pest free and looks extremely healthy. I wonder how long that will continue for. We are also preparing for our first crop which will be ´oriental leaves´. I´m not sure where we got them from but they are varieties of lettuce as far as I can see. We plan on having them at a barbie at the weekend. Let´s hope the weather is OK.
spuds leading the way top right, peas and bean top left
The weather has actually been perfect for growing things – plenty of sun and rain. In fact despite some friendly joshing from Luis who thought our water tank (see previous post) would take forever to fill, after some pretty heavy rain in the last week (thankfully mostly overnight) we have already collected over 300 litres.
While Jackie has been busy on the veggies, I have turned my attention to rescuing more of the olive trees from ivy and brambles and also some strimming (yet again) – perfect weather for veggies is the same perfect weather for weeds and grass. However, I have also been able to do some landscaping and by using quite a few discarded rocks from the house, I have created the ´peninsula´, a raised area in front of the threshing square. We’ve already planted a few decorative plants in and around it but I think it will take quite some time before it starts to look anywhere near attractive. It’s a start anyway.
´The peninsula´
In addition to all this, I’ve also made another video (it’s not surprisingly on the video page of the blog). A little update on how the place is coming along. Check it out.
P.S. plums and cherries already starting to appear!! yum yum.
