Always Take Before Photos...

14 days of progress

It’s been 2 weeks since we got the keys of the big, collapsing house… which is actually, less collapsing than anticipated (yes, I’m probably speaking too soon).

Anyway, the wood-powered boiler is gone and a new, fancy electric boiler is in. Last night I had a gloriously hot, 10 minute shower and it felt like the most luxurious thing in the world.

It didn’t matter that I had to jump over a huge, gaping hole in the bathroom floor when I’d finished. I was just happy for the warmth.

Julie has been going wild painting the place, Tim has been wiring up the electrics & Ash has been working on bathroom number one, which should’ve been finished days ago, but the Italian postal service have managed to lose our shower tray, so work has come to a standstill.

I was back in the UK for four days last week, so feeling guilty about my own efforts, I’ve been sanding furniture non-stop for the past few days. I’m full of splinters, constantly covered in dust, and reckon my arms haven’t had a workout like this in over a decade.

It’s great! I fall asleep absolutely exhausted every night, but wake up excited to haul the next piece of furniture from the shed, or the cantina, or the attic, and get working on turning into a thing of beauty.

My joy is doubled because for the first time ever, I officially have an office.

For years, I’ve had to write from sofas, from desks crammed into the corner of bedrooms, from coffee shops and kitchen tables. I have never had a room of one’s own.

As I type, sun pours through the cracked windows & I can stare out at the forests where I go and walk Wilson every day.

There are so many pictures to share, so I think I’ll stick them all on Insta, if you want to follow along and see our progress. Although, despite me being the person who said we must take loads of ‘before’ photos, I keep forgetting. It’s only when I’m three hours into stripping the paint from a table, or I’m two thirds of the way through smashing up a sideboard, that I remember I really should be documenting the transition.

The past two weeks have flown by, but with four of us working round the clock, we’re making amazing progress.

The garden is tidy & two extra bedrooms are now habitable. The dining room is as close to finished as it’ll be for the next six months & the living room (that previously looked like the inside of a sauna) has been completely transformed thanks to copious amounts of white paint.

I wouldn’t advise painting wood panelling (my god, getting the paint into all those little lines is annoying), but it’s a cheap way to get the place looking fresh enough for now.

Unfortunately, we’re still without a plumber to get the central heating sorted, so it looks like we might be going into the winter with only a couple of stoves and some electric heaters. But, for now, the sun is shining and it’s 26 degrees, so life isn’t too shabby.

Remind me of how happy I am when it’s the middle of January and my tears are freezing as they run down my face!

Anyway, my ma is visiting next week, and then hopefully Dean will be out a couple of weeks later, to have a proper look at the place before giving me all his top tips for how to move forward with the project.

In the meantime, I’ll start posting more photos on the Insta and give you another update next week.