This blogspace chronicles the ups and downs of our house renovation project in Vale de Prazeres, Portugal from first purchase in November 2019.
- Written by: Rick Nason
Finally, the new door and windows for the kitchen have been installed. There was a slight hiccup when the original date was spoiled by a tree falling onto our car during the journey to the house on Tuesday last.
Read more: But soft, what light through yonder window breaks
- Written by: Rick Nason
Edit: Since posting the original message the window supplier has informed me that they will be installing the new items tomorrow - yippee!!
Due to the existing Coronavirus restrictions our visits to the house are limited, and may be stopped completely if things get worse, but obviously we'll try to continue the work.
- Written by: Rick Nason
Coronavirus has slowed everything down to a crawl.
But creeping forward with the kitchen I managed to collect the new granite window sills ordered two weeks ago and they are a perfect fit, thank you to Granidarte in Fundão.
- Written by: Rick Nason
Green Fingers ... and green legs, green face, green clothes etc.
Janet has been busy once again with her new strimmer clearing the weeds and long grass from the garden. It's looking much less like a jungle now.
- Written by: Rick Nason
I've been having great fun planning and rewiring the kitchen room, a new consumer unit and all new cabling. Earlier this week was an opportunity to disconnect the existing circuits and get the new up and running.
- Written by: Rick Nason
Since originally ordering new windows and a door for the kitchen back in January we ave been in touch regularly with the manufacturers.
They keep promising that someone will visit the house and take measurements (because they assume that I cannot use a tape measure).
- Written by: Rick Nason
After a short, anxious episode re-assembling the borehole pump and lowering it into position the end result feels like this moment from a great movie.
- Written by: Rick Nason
It looks like the water pump can be salvaged and repaired after all, saving a fat chunk of money that we can ill afford to spend.
- Written by: Rick Nason
When we bought the house we had a brief spell of difficulty with the water supply from the borehole, the pump would run and pressurise the system. The pressure switch tripped out at 2 bar and then the system would drain back into the borehole and the cycle started again. We didn't know this was happening and the first electricity bill was rather high prompting me to look for a cause.
- Written by: Rick Nason
While we wait for the new door and windows to be installed the work inside the house has slowed dramatically. However, there is still some investigation work to do.
- Written by: Rick Nason
After a day off from the renovation work, only to do housework instead, I returned today to get more of the wall framing installed. I am rapidly running out of suitable drill bits to put holes in the new tiles, these things are so hard for the first 60-70% of the tile thickness even the specialist tile bits are being destroyed even with water cooling.
- Written by: Rick Nason
Now that the floor is finished it´s time to make the walls nice. The plan is to install a false wall and actually insulate the cavity which should help keep the warmth in during Winter and keep some of the heat out in Summer.
- Written by: Rick Nason
Now that the workshop has been cleared out, it seems much more spacious - I can't think why
- Written by: Rick Nason
Having taken a brief break for Christmas and the New Year we are now progressing well with the kitchen. We now have new tiles on the floor, all ready for the grouting.
- Written by: Rick Nason
The past few days have been pretty bad weather (mau tempo). bringing heavy rain and strong winds all across Portugal. Atlantic storm Elsa made her presence known on Thursday, we had trees down, roads blocked and flooding all over the place.