Wow the last blog feels like ages ago! I'll try my best to remember what we've been doing. Here we go... I'll skip stright to Sunday though as Saturday was a chilled day on the sofa watching movies and eating! Oh and on the last blog it had been lovely weather all week - but sadly that evening was the last of it. The last week has been grey, miserable and a quite wet. Having said that the last few days have been sunny, but definitely much colder than 25 degrees.
Today we were meeting up with George to walk to the lake. Some of you might rememeber that we went to a beautiful lake on my birthday and on Petes birthday which we swam in and it looked like this...
Well, George had been recently to visit this lake and found that the water had some how vanished and gone down to only about 30%. He had talked to our village mayor about why this was and her answer apparently wasn't very convincing - George reckons there could be something dodgy going on with land owners using the water for crops or similar. Anyway, he had managed to find where the water was being let out of the lake, but it was extremely over grown and difficult to get to - the perfect excuse for someone to not stop it! So this morning we walked to the lake, tools in hand, and spent a couple of hours hacking down brush and small trees to make a clear path to the stop tap place! The lake was really looking empty and water was rushing out of it, which is just such a shame. Hopefully this gets sorted as we are looking forward to swimming and picnicing there next year!
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| Wild horses |
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| Water has gone :( |
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| Cutting the path |
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| Water flowing out |
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| Path! |
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| Pete and George |
The lake is an hours walk away and by the time we'd got there, done our good deed and got back it was nearly 3 o'clock. Back at home Pete quickly plastered above the door in the bathroom and we tidied up the house a bit. I think we had a mellow evening in the yellow room.
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| Plastered |
Monday
Today Pete was back out in the garden working on the veg patch again. He spent most of the day digging out the rest of the beds and digging up even more stumps. He did managed to save a load of bulbs, which we know from spring and summer are crocuses, tulips and orange lilies and he also dug up loads of horse radish, which was obviously planted by the previous owner! So thats pretty good!!
Whilst he was doing this I painted the last bit of wall in the bathroom - but annoyingly we ran out paint so I didn't get too far with that. I then spent an hour or so bringing in wheelbarrows of sand and stones to in front of the house as we planned to start work in the hallway this week. Annoyingly we ended up deciding not to actually concrete the floor so this was a bit of a waste of time, but at least the outside of the house looks (slightly) neater without a mound of sand there.
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| Run out of paint!! Annoying! |
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| I moved all that sand and stone... |
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| ...from here. |
In the afternoon we bothe worked in the garden and filled all the dug out beds with base stones so it doesn't grow over over winter. We think the beds are looking really good - although our neighbours don't quite understand why we would waste so much veg growing space by building walls!!
Tuesday
Another grey day today, which has been making us lie in longer as it's cold and not pretty outside! We did eventually get up today though and we had a mission to finish the airing cupboard. Because we need access to the taps, and because of how deep the cupboard is, we could only fit in two shelves and it didn't take long to do. We did have to plane a few planks of wood but we had it finished by lunch time and I filled it with towels and bedding - i feel so grown up having an airing cupboard!!
In the afternoon Pete was feeling ill so, after helping me a bit with the cement mixer, he went to bed to relax. I was in the mood for working so I carried on and I managed to concrete the back of the hallway (where we'd dug out for water pipes) so it was level with the rest of the floor. As it is only the hallway and the floor is already concrete we have decided to just tile over it and not bother with digging it out or insulating it.
After I'd done the concreting I had still had time to cut and glue in the edging for the airing cupboard, so that is now completely finished - except for a curtain, which we still need to find one we like.
In the evening Pete was feeling a bit better and we had another evening in the yellow room and I skyped my friend for a catch up. :)
Wednesday
We were up earlyish this morning with a plan to demolish the hallway walls! We were clearing out all the stuff before we started when Hristo came over with a a bit of water pipe, asking for our help. We went over to his house to see what he was talking about and it turned out he had a leak and he wanted us to to the plumbing and fix it for him! We are professionals now! And we actually managed to fix it successfully. :D
Back at home we cracked on with the task of smashing the old walls down and getting back to the stone in the hallway. The walls are lime, straw and mud so it was a horrible dusty job - but we revealed some very pretty stone walls, some of which we will keep exposed. I got started with this on my own whilst Pete was upstairs making marmalade and also extending the waste water pipe at the back of the house because it was running down the house and coming through the wall in the hallway (you can see it in the pictures.)
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| Pipe extended |
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| All protected |
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| Before |
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| After |
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| Before |
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| After |
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| Going to keep these two lovely walls exposed |
We spent all day chipping away at the walls, and it took a good hour or so to clear it all up into rubble bags. It feels great to finally start work in the hall - it means all of downstairs will be finished and we will be living in a building site no longer!
In the evening we had a night away from the TV and played scrabble and had a few glasses of wine. A lovely evening.
Hristo had asked us if he could come with us to the market on Friday, which was fine but we didn't want to drag him around shopping all day. Because of this we decided to do our big shopping day today, including going to Stara Zagora for more paint and a couple of other bits. We also bought all the wood for doing the stud walls in the hall way and loads of food (not veggies) so we can start freezing stuff for winter.
We were out shopping all day, and it took an hour to unload everything from the van. We also plugged in our big chest freezer when we got back so we are ready to do some cooking!
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| Loads of wood! |
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| Freezer is ON |
In the evening we had an early night as we were picking up Hristo at 8.30 tomorrow morning.
Friday
So we were up early and to the market to do a big but speedy shop of fruit and veg whilst Hristo waited for us. We then took him to the shop he wanted to go to to buy a fridge and he showed us a couple of other shops in Chirpan we didn't know about so that is pretty good. Also he took us to the Chirpan museum and art gallery, which we hadn't visited yet but was actually quite good! There was an old house that a famous poet used to live in and a small art gallery with huge crystals from Brazil and abstract art by Bulgarias most famous artist (who comes from Chirpan apparently!) And we were told they do concerts and stuff here in summer - so it's good to know that there is a small slice of culture in Chirpan, can you believe!
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| Traditional Bulgarian home |
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| Art gallery in Chirpan |
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| Famed Chirpan knives |
It was a really gloomy, rainy day today so instead of starting the hall (we would need to cut the wood and plasterboard outside) we decided to do some cooking instead. We got the heater on and the radio going and we chopped veg and made a big batch of chicken curry and a big batch chilli. We also organised all our preserves, finished making the marmalade that Pete started the other day and we even had a go at making peanut butter - which turned out okay. The food was yummy and the curry cooled enough to bag it all up and date it, ready for the freezer. We have 6 dinners now that we can just heat up over the fire! I also left Pete for a minute to FINALLY finish painting the bathroom - so now all the walls are lovely and blue.
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| Rainy day |
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| Chilli getting started, curry nearly done |
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| Home made peanut butter |
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| Some more marmalade |
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| Yay! Painted at last |
In the evening Hristo had invited us round for another session of home made rakia and wine, and we ended up having another really fun evening - this time dancing to Prince and Rolling Stones until one in the morning!
We had our usual Saturday off - chilling in the yellow room, away from the cold and rain, and watching movies all day. Today we even got the fire going in the day time as it was so cold! Oh we did get up to bag the chilli we'd made yesterday and to eat food! :D
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| More dinners to freeze |
Sunday
Back to work today! We got started on the hall way stud walls. We put up some damp proof on the back wall and worked our way around the three walls - even getting two sheets of plasterboard up. We did get the majority of the stud wall up today but didn't have the rest of the plasterboard yet so stopped at about 4.30 and Pete took Lucy out for a walk and I did the washing up and got the fire going.
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| Pete screwed the wood to the wall, forgot his hand was behind it and got it stuck! Haha! |
Monday
This morning I woke up at sunrise, which was beautiful and the first time we'd seen it for ages! This was a great way to start the day and gave us loads of energy to get up and do stuff. We started the day separetely with small tasks. So we'd found out this week (after the rain) that the leaking in the chimney in the yellow room, that we'd thought was coming through the bricks, was actually coming down the chimney - it is quite a big hole as the rpevious fire place was large. This meant we needed to cover the hole (with a gap obviously) unless we wanted it to keep dripping. So this morning Pete got up on the roof again to fashion a chimney cap out of bricks and a tile. It will probably be a temporary solution but I think it looks okay!
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| Sunrise |
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| Cap on the chimney |
Whilst he did that I put an extra bracket on the down pipe as the bottom pipe kept falling off. It might be very wonky, but it's sturdy now at least.
After these jobs were done we got to work finishing off the stud wall. There wasn;t much left to do but it was all the small fiddly bits, including going around all the electric cables and drilling into stone. We finished doing this by about 2 o'clock then we drove to Chirpan - planning to just nip in, buy plasterboard and then head back to start putting it up. We took Lucy with us and whilst we were in the builders merchants she escaped from the van and ran away. She crossed the main road and then went out of our sight, in to the warren of the streets of Chirpan. This was horrible and we drove around for about 45 minutes shouting her name, but didn't see her anywhere. We ended up going back to the main road, parking and setting off on foot to find her. Thankfully we found her by the road and she came running to us - I think she was scared of loosing us too! We got her back in the van and vowed to not to ever bring her to Chirpan again! Stressful.
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| Our chickens |
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| All the stud work is in. |
This had also taken up our whole afternoon so we only had time to get up one sheet of plasterboard and then just bring the rest in ready for tomorrow.
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| One sheet going up |
In the evening we had a lovely dinner, settled in the yellow room and skyped Petes dad for a few hours.
Tuesday
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| Garden and house in the sunshine |
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| The village and our street |
Not loads to write about today - we plasterboarded the whole hall and it looks great. We finished the day by foaming all the gaps (there were quite a few!) In the evening we went to the village bar to see S & G for a couple of beers.
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| My hand cut by the plasterboard saw |
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| It was a chilly night as you can tell |
Wednesday
Today has been a good day. I started the day by taping and joining all the plasterboard - which took a while as there were a few fiddly gaps. Whilst I was doing this Pete got a rubbish fire going, moved all the rubble sacks away from the front of the house and cooked a delicious pork stew - ready to be frozen in bags. :)
Once all that was done we stopped for a coffee as it was a gorgeous sunny day, and we had a stroll around the orchard as the wind and rain has bought down a few more walnuts - which we are collecting for eating ourselves. After this little break we headed over to SG, to one of our paid jobs, to check up on the garden and do a bit of work. We also wanted to check on the medlar tree - which has loads of fruit on it but needs a few more days to ripen.
This evening Pete has cooked a lovely dinner and I have written the blog. The fire is going and we are lovely and cosy. Not too long a post today, hope you enjoyed. :)
xxx
Coincidentally a walking friend of mine in the walking group said to me that when looses his rescued dog he stays put. Dogs have a way of smelling their way back to where they last saw their owner. He has a mtorhome/camper caravan so I guess his experiences and yours corroborate the truth. I would not like to lo loose a dog. Taking a lead seems to be a good choice if you take Lucy out to unfamiliar places. Poor lake, Floor boards in the hall could be an alternative to tiling and it provides insulation and still allows you to put a rug. Check out costs.
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