Week nine.

Sunday

 

Last Sunday we had a full day off. Apart from preparing food for the evening we did nothing all day except relax in the sun. At about 6 o'clock S & G and DW came round for a BBQ and we had a lovely evening full of great food, beer, bonfire, fireflies and chocolate cake.

 

Monday

 

A slightly late start to Monday as we woke up with a bit of a headache! We eventually got around to working though at about 11. We were on a mission this week to get the 'horrible' room a bit more accesible - at least with a floor. So we started by digging out what was left of the rocky/mud floor. This was alot harder and took alot longer than anticipated but we got there in the end - having to leave some of the huge rocks in; we'd just have to work around them. We then bought in sand in attempt to level it out slightly.

 

Digging

Sand in.

 

Even once we'd dug everything out and laid sand the floor was still very uneven - so we took a different approach to laying the floor than in the other room. We had bought a much more heavy duty damp proof membrane (this room is underground so really needs the protection), as well as slightly thicker insulation (for the same reason.) After these two layers were down the floor was obviously still very bumpy so we would have to level it out with the concrete - which is fine but much harder work for Pete laying it!

 

Ready for concreting!

 

As we were on a roll we thought we'd mix up a bit of cement and attempt to lay concrete 'batons' to make the job of laying the floor a bit easier. This however didn't turn out very well at all so we ended up just starting the floor at one end. After a hard days work with a hangover we had a very early night!

 

Little bit done, time for bed.

Tuesday

 

We had another chilled morning this morning as we skyped Petes mum at about 9 o'clock. Not much to say from today except that we worked constantly from 10.30 until 7.45! LONG AND VERY HOT DAY - 30 something degrees! And we didn't even quite finish concreting the floor! We did get the majority of it done though and it already has made such a difference to the room :) One thing that did happen in the day was at midday a very loud air raid siren went off in the village. Just to check that the Russians weren't invading I had a quick look on the internet to see what it meant. Midday on 2nd June is Bulgarians 'minute silence' to remember lives lost during the fight for independence (only it's not so silent with an air raid siren.) In the evening we skyped my mum and dad for a couple of hours whilst drinking beer!

 

At work

Mmm strawberries from the neighbours!

Done for the day

Wednesday

 

After such a long day yesterday we decided we'd have a slightly more relaxed day and go to Stara Zagora to do some shopping (building stuff of course!) We spent several hours in the big builders shop deciding which plasterboard etc to buy and then another few hours (it felt) loading it all in to the van. The next stop was the mall to have some lunch and then go and buy a washing machine. This is seriously exciting as I have given up hand washing clothes so we are just slowly going through all the clothes we own! Lastly we wanted to a bit of shopping in a real supermarket, as there are some things we can't get in Chirpan (like peanut butter.) We'd noticed next to the mall that there was a huge Carrefour (big French supermarket) so we thought we'd try there. After spending a while driving around and around the shop trying to find parking, we found they only had a multi-story - not good with the van. In the end we did find somewhere to park but had to walk quite far to get in the shop. And then when we were in there it was completely empty! It was so weird! The shelves were stocked only one item deep and we wondered how old some of the 'fresh' food was! And they didn't even have peanut butter. We did manange to find some nice red wine and prosecco though, so it was okay in the end. Annoyingly it was getting late now so we didn't look for another supermarket, we just headed home.

Creeepy empty supermarket!

In the evening M & D had asked us to feed their cats again as they were out for the night with clients. After unloading the van we went to set off to SG to feed said cats, when we noticed we had a seriously flat tyre. Just our luck! Luckily we'd bought a full jack set on Ebay just before we left the UK so we got to work putting on the spare. After spending a while jacking the van up we got the spanner to take off the tyre and found it was the wrond bloody size! We hadn't checked it before!! Ahh! Not wanting to leave starving animals we drove very slowly to SG to feed the cats and then came home. Back in our village we very much fancied a beer and didn't have any at home so walked around to the bar - which was closed. What a day! We went back to the tent and drank a bottle of prosecco instead.

Washing machine! :)

Flat tyre :(

 

Thursday - Saturday

 

Lavender fields and wild flowers

Lovely lunch

 

I have already forgotten exactly what we did over Thursday, Friday and Saturday days, but it involved doing several jobs around the house and, of course, visiting Chirpan market and doing some shopping.

 

Bought loads of wood

 

We finished off the concrete floor in the now 'not-so-horrible' room so that was looking very good. In the same room we also knocked through the wall where the toilet door will eventually go, so we could measure it up and see if any of our second hand doors will fit in it (they will, yay!)

 

Floor finished

Wall before...

...

... From the otherside - the toilet door will be on the right.

 

In the other room we scraped out all the old mortar from between the stones so it was ready to be repointed and we plained the door so it will finally close properly. In Chirpan we also bought some lime mortar and some dye - we weren't sure what colour we wanted to point the stone, so we tried them both out on an area of stone that will eventually be covered. The plain lime mortar won by far!

 

Scraped wall on the left

Closing door and lovely wall ready for poitning

Mortar with dye bottom left
Mortar plain top right

 

We had a big fire to burn more scraps of wood and some rubbish from around the house. And we managed to borrow the right size spanner from M & D so we could change our tyre - and then go to Chirpan and buy a new spanner!

 

 

We plumbed in our washing machine all by ourselves with no leaks, which we were very happy about. Pete also strimmed the garden and we had a good look at our fruit trees, which are beginning to fruit!

 

Excellent plumbing skills.

 

Quinces

Apples

Cherries

Pears

Mulberries

Forgot photos of the walnuts and the plums!

 

In Chirpan we had bought all the wood to make a stud wall between the bedroom and bathroom, as well as the wood for the batons to go into the wall to screw the plasterboard to. So we measured and cut all the batons to size and then our hammer drill broke - so we had no way to drill into the stone. We considered going to Chirpan again to buy a new one but decided against it as we had other things we could get on with.

 

Batons and plasterboard ready for when we have a new drill.

 

So we went to build our stud wall. We built the frame for it but found, as the walls in the room are so wonky, that we should wait to do the rest as we couldn't get the exact measurements for where we will put the plasterboard.

 

What will be...

...a wall between bedroom and bathroom.

Pete got on with bricking up more of the alcoves in the 'not-so-horrible' room whilst I started chipping off the old plaster from the stone wall that we are going to have exposed in that room.

 

Alcoves and more fireplace gone

Uncovering stone wall - not as nice as the others!

Saturday evening we went to SG festival which was really good fun. We hung out with alot of other expats, watched some traditional Bulgarian dancing and drank alot of beer and local wine. We also met a lovely guy who has just bought a house in SG and got ourselves another gardening job - which is amazing! As well as that we met a very lovely dog who was looking for a home (she is a stray dog that an Engish couple found a few weeks ago, but they only live here part time so cannot keep her.) She is the most gorgeous, friendly dog and we have now decided that we will stay here this winter, so we arranged for her to be dropped off the the morning! We now have a beautiful doggy!!

 

SG festival

Sunday

 

Another slow day - partly due to the beer the previous night, but mostly because we had our lovely new dog to pet and look after. She is lovely! The couple that had her before had named her Lady, which we liked but for some reason it wouldn't stick in my head, and every time I went to call her I said Lucy. We then thought that she looked quite like a Lucy so Lucy is her new name. She is very well behaved and we are trying to teach her to come here and stay. At first she was seeming like she missed her previous owners, but slowly she is settling in. :)

 

 

Lucy!

 

We have a huge inflatable 'swimming pool' that we bought a few weeks ago but have been postponing putting up as it needs to be on level land - and we don't have any! We spent half of Sunday bringing up sand from the front of the house to try and make a level area for it. In the end we thought it was level enough (we would just have a deep end!) so started filling the pool, but after an hour or so of filling it we found it definitely wasn't level enough and it started over-flowing. We were considering ideas of how to level the ground without digging it, so we drove to Chirpan quickly to go and buy some chipboard so we could make a platform for it. However we found that chipboard was more expensive than it is in England so we sacked that off and came home. In the afternoon we popped by M & Ds to say hello and also went to see the garden we will be working in for our new job. After all this we were too knackered to think about the pool anymore so we had an early night.

 

Failing at putting up the pool - saving all the water!

Strimming the walnut orchard

Monday

 

We woke up fairly early this morning as we wanted to take Lucy out for a walk. In the night she had escaped from her rope (we'd put her on a long rope so she didn't run away!) but she was still here in the morning, so we are very happy about that. We took her for about an hours walk and had her off the lead the whole time and she stayed with us, so now we have just let her roam around. She has run out the gate a few times but has always come back, so hopefully we're doing something right! Oh this reminds me we have also let our chickens go 'free range' and they are out and about exporing the land and eating loads of the bugs, which is great! We've done this for three nights now and every night they have all gone back in the coop. We have also had 3 eggs every day for the last 3 days. So it's all going well with our nine animals!

The smell is as lovely as the flowers!

Chickens on the loose

Work wise we spent the whole morning sorting out our swimming pool. We finally gave in and decided we needed to dig it out so we dug the high side and levelled it on to the lower side. We then used al the sand we had shifted yesterday to cover any spiky twigs and put old rugs on top for extra protection. By lunch time the pool was finally flat and filling up nicely! In the afternoon Pete started to point up the wall in the bedroom, whilst I carried on removing the old plaster from the other room and scraping out the old mortar so we can eventually point that up aswell. After about 5 hours we had finished working and the pool was pretty much full - then the clouds rolled over! It has been one of those weeks!! The weather is still warm - just not exactly pool weather - but because we were worried about the rain we decided to bring up some stones and build a mini retaining wall, so all our hard digging work doesn't get washed away!

 

It was too hot for clothes today - boxers only!

Digging and laying sand

Levelling

Rugs out

YES!

Retaining wall

 

Lovely repointed wall

Wall nearly ready to be repointed

In the evening Pete cooked a lovely dinner and we skyped Petes mum as she is off on her honeymoon tomorrow :)

 

Sorry for the long post! I must try to update more reguarly! It's been a good week though - we've done alot of work and got a wonderful new addition to the family. 

 

 

Leka Nosht xxx