Long weekend...

With Monday being a holiday we have a long weekend to do quite some work. The workmen will only come back on Tuesday, so that gives us plenty of time to do some work around the house ourselves. So far we have given the painted doors and door frames their last coat of paint. We have also sanded down our newest piece of funiture that we bought at an 'antique' store in Lousa, and are waiting for the first coat of paint to dry. Hopefully by tonight we will be able to apply the last coat of paint and it will be ready for our guest room upstairs.

Tomorrow we would like paint as much of the second floor as possible for the last time, so that it is ready for us to move into when all the sanding of the wood floor has finished.

Doors

Now that the wood floor is finished, the carpenters have started placing the doors on the second floor. With the water (only cold so far) working, the electricity switches and plugs being placed and the carpenters work almost coming to an end, we hope to be able to move upstairs very soon! We no longer dare to name a date of when we think to be sleeping upstairs and unpacking boxes, but we hope these will be our last nights downstairs.

Wood Floor

The wood floor has been completely placed upstairs and is now ready to be sanded and to have the baseboards placed. The doors on the 2nd floor have also been delivered (sometime last week) and the carpenters have started to place the frames today, crossing our fingers that that too will be finished by tomorrow evening.

Other than the carpenters' work, the terrace on the first floor has been treated with a water-resistance layer now ready for tiling, the electrician has been here every day this week to continue his work, the plumber has installed the bathroom on the 1st floor, and the men working with the plaster board have starting placing the ceiling in all guest rooms.

Several pictures uploaded to the slide show, but many more to come in the next couple days.

Olives

 

Fall is here, and while the works on the house continue, the olives in the garden are turning black and ready to be picked. We have picked about half a bucket of olives and are following the instructions we got from our workmen to make them edible: soak them in water and salt, changing the water every couple of days. After about 2 to 3 weeks they should be ready to eat. Mmmm....

Windows and much much more

It is once again an extremely busy day, it started this morning at 8am with us removing all old windows in the house and preparing for the new ones to be placed. At 9.30 the new windows were delivered and are still being placed as we speak. The carpenter also showed up this morning to start laying the wood floor and has almost finished our bedroom. Jose, our plumber, who is also here, and has completely finished our bathroom upstairs and is now working on the 1st floor bathroom.

So much being done that it's hard to keep track of it all at times, but definetly worth it!

A quick note..

Only a quick note tonight as it was a very long day of painting. Since only several of the workmen came to work today (the others off on another job) we had the time to start the painting of the second floor. We were able to finish the first layer of the bedroom and sitting room and hope to continue tomorrow.


Besides the painting today, we also received the delivery of our wood floor and if all goes as planned the carpenter will be here tomorrow to start placing it in our bedroom and sitting room. ALSO, we got news that all new windows will be placed tomorrow, including the glass doors to the guest rooms downstairs!

Today's To-do-list:: what can we check off?

So today didn't turn out exactly as we had thought it would, but it was still a great day of work. One of the four terraces is now completely done in terms of cement and stones. I think all left to do is a bit of polishing, but not sure exactly as to how or what or when, I guess we'll see.

The plasterboard upstairs didn't quite finish up everything, but I've been promised it will all be done by tomorrow. So far, 3 out of the 4 rooms are done, AND have been cleaned and treated with the water resistant product. Crossing our fingers that the last and biggest room will be done tomorrow.

The carpenter showed up this afternoon and took with him 2 inside doors to cut off a couple centimeters, seeing as with the new floor we had to slice a couple centimeter off the frame. Sorry to all those tall people out there, our doors are now only 1m97. He also took the front door to the reception, which  needs to be changed to open outwardly for fire security, not the simplest of things to do, but he promised me he would be able to fix it.

And last but not least, the whole 1st floor terrace has been re-cemented, now ready to be tiled and to have the railing put back on. YAY for all the work that has been done, but BOO to the fact that taking the dog out this evening is not the easiest of things to do as we are now not allowed to walk on the 1st floor terrace, nor the stone terrace..hmm..it does get tricky at times. 

And with all the men (11 to be exact) working hard, I was inspired to start painting the ceiling of the 1st floor bathroom...


All in all it was not such a bad day. Pictures will follow tomorrow because by the time we were all done working the moon was out and the stars were sparkling high in the sky...

Good night to all!

Today's To-do-list:

- finish the staircase (place stones on steps)
- continue building the annex
- finish all work on the plasterboard upstairs so that the cement floor can be cleaned 
- vacuum all cement floors upstairs (on 2nd floor) and treat with a water resistant product -> ready for placing the wood floor
- carpenter comes to fix all inside doors on 1st floor

  This is what the annex looks like after yesterday's work.

Terraces

The finishing of the terraces has started. One out of the four has been made with the stone slates that were originally on the back side of the house. Waiting for the cement to dry to fill the gaps with smaller pieces of stone and to fill the groves.

Finish Laundry Room this weekend: Done

Our very first room is done (except for placing the windows) and we just couldn't wait any longer so we put together the cupboard and were finally able to unpack some boxes. All we need to do now is hope that it doesn't rain and wait for our windows to be placed.

Foundation

Friday afternoon the foundations of the annex were started. This is how it was left of for the weekend, to continue work on Monday morning.

Annex

The digging for the foundations of the annex have started. The annex will be a little house in which the instalations for the solar pannels and hot water will be placed, and the pump for the water well. In the future we hope it will also contain the pump for a swimming pool.

L'oeil-de-boeuf

L'oeil-de-boeuf is what they call the top most window in the house. The paint job is done, the windows have been placed and the bricks are cleaned. This is the end result of the top most part of the house, the sunshine and clear blue sky just adding to it's brillance.

Baseboards (Plinten)

The baseboards have arrived a couple of minutes ago, hopefully this means that they will place them today which would be the last thing to do in the laundry room (besides a last coat of paint, but that is my job). Can I really start to hope that maybe by the end of the week I can start unpacking some boxes?

ps. unlike what the BBC weather says, the weather is beautiful at the moment. Sun shining and temperatures in the high 20s (Celsius). Definetly what we call t-shirt weather!

Take a look at this link for further local weather updates :

http://tempo.sapo.pt/local/vila_nova_de_poiares

More pictures uploaded to the slideshow...

All (except 1 small piece) of the scaffolding has been removed. Most of the house has been painted in the primer and the top of the house has been painted with the final coat of paint. The house finally has it's glow back, which makes it very hard to wait with the interior painting and decorating. If all goes well we will be able to unpack our boxes and paint our living space within the next 2 weeks.

Painting

Today was the celebration of 100 years Portugal as a republic, so the workmen had the day off today. We took advantage of that to start painting the laundry room which was floored on Friday of last week and yesterday (Monday). We started with the hope of painting 2 layers and have that be enough to cover all cement and marks made. So far we are happy with the result, now just waiting for it to dry and to see the end result in daylight tomorrow. We were also able to start painting the doorframes of 3 doors that will remain.


Take a look at more photos of the paint, floors, windows, solar panels, overal pictures of the house, in the slideshow of the works.