Week forty nine.

So it's been a slightly frustrating week as work on the porch has come to a halt, for various reasons, yet again., and because of that I thought we hadn't progressed as much as we'd hoped. However looking back over the photos we've actually done quite a bit of work (of course there is plenty of other stuff to do!) and it's been a lovely week with great weather and we've even had 2 barbeques - in March!

Spring flowers making the house smell amazing

Monday 14th

The drizzle stayed with us for Monday so we put off any major jobs and decided to do a big clean up of the the house. Pete got on with tidying, sweeping, mopping etc. downstairs whilst I thought I'd get started on the horrendously messy upstairs room (where we are storing all our stuff we haven't yet unpacked) which needs to be cleared out for renovations later in the year.

I managed to get this entire room full of stuff condensed down to a few boxes and moved to the barn. All our tools are now also stored in the barn and one room upstairs is, almost, ready for demolition! We still need to move the massive wardrobe that is full of the previous house owners clothes and, for now, we are using the room as our seedling farm.
 

Before - disaster

After

Also after - seedlings in the window

Everything tidy in the barn

Soaking some old crockery that came with the house! 

View from the upstairs room

Pete bashing out the rugs

Nice and tidy. I found a blanket to be used as our headboard - we love it!

Basil and purple basil are doing great



In the afternoon/evening we took Lucy for a drizzly walk and Pete made some home made Chivda (a tastier version of Bombay mix!) and we got cosy in the clean and giddy yellow room and watched telly.

Walks

Mmmm Chivda

Lazy evening

 

Tuesday 15th

So for a few months Pete has had tooth ache on and off, but because we've been busy (and scared of the dentist) he has chosen to ignore it. However for the last couple of days it has been getting worse and today the pain was enough to brave a visit to the dentist in Chirpan.

 

We found out where it was and with some trepidation we headed into town late morning. We walked in to a small waiting room with a few other people and had to wait for about an hour. We were then called in and we had to explain that we didn't really speak any Bulgarian - the dentist didn't speak English but was very friendly so that was comforting. Pete got on the chair, the dentist looked in his mouth and within 20 minutes he'd had one of his back teeth pulled out! Well, that will fix it! There was no after care at all, he was just told to take whatever pain killers he liked, and off we went.

We stopped off to see S & G on the way home for a cuppa, and to report on the dentist experience, before heading home. As you'd imagine Pete was in quite a lot of pain by now so we got the fire on and had the rest of the day off. I made a liquid lunch (not the good kind!) of soup and a smoothie as chewing was also proving difficult for poor Pete. In the afternoon I did go out for a couple of hours to sand and paint the other door, so they are almost finished now which is good.

Bilko wants out

Wednesday 16th

 

This morning Pete's mouth was still hurting but he decided he wanted to crack on with work anyway. It was a cloudy morning but at last there was no rain forecast so we thought we'd brave finally smashing down the old balcony.

 

Demolition man ready

 

We started by using our disc cutter but we only have a small one and it was only cutting into the concrete about a centimetre with wasn't much help. We then had a go with the sledge hammer but when it smacked down it shook the entire house, so that was a bit worrying. So it was back to the trusty jigger jigger, which worked a treat and got the job done perfectly. We managed to do it all in a few hours, but would you believe that whilst we were working it bloody started raining! After all the waiting! In fact it didn't only rain - it was so cold the rain was turning to hail - typical!! Thankfully it wasn't heavy and it didn't last long so we didn't have to stop. We decided to leave a small overhang and the old re-bar in to use to hold a tarp up incase of heavy rain.

 

Making a lot of rubble

 

Hail!

 

Balcony down

 

And the corner post gone as well

It was early afternoon by the time we'd finished and tidied everything up, and although it wasn't raining it was absolutely freezing outside. Pete's mouth was also starting to hurt again so we decided to spend the afternoon in Chirpan, shopping for yet more building materials for the porch and other jobs. One major thing we need was ties - to tie the new wall into the old stone wall. Crazily the builders merchants didn't know what we were talking about (although this shouldn't be surprising from the state of some of the extensions we've seen around!) but Pete managed to come up with a very clever idea using threaded metal and wall plugs, so our wall should be secure.

Pretty blossom in the village

Thursday 17th

Finally the sun is back! Pete was still aching but we were full loaded with concrete blocks and the sun was shining, so we thought we'd get started on building our porch - woo hoo!

We started by knocking out the old bricks that were filling a gap down the side of the front door. This has left us with a large hole into our hallway, so it's lucky the weather is getting better. We also knocked the old render off the house where we will need to tie in the new walls.

Pete was doing the expert work of laying the blocks whilst I mixed the concrete, carried the blocks over from the front gate and filled several blocks with concrete to make them solid (we don't want a hollow wall where we have to fix the door in.) It was a slow-ish start as we needed to make sure everything was square and Pete had to get the bottom layer level and in line with the bottom step, which we were building off. Once the first course was down it was much easier going and Pete did a great job laying the blocks. We had the music on loud and it was a fun and productive day - it felt good to be building again!

 

Hole in the house

 

Render coming down

 

Preparing

 

Genius ties for the new wall

 

Filling blocks with concrete

 

 

Done for the day

During our lunch break Pete also got to hang his bacon up at the back of the house to air dry it.

I hope the jackals don't get it!

We stopped working at about half four - just enough time to clean everything up, take Lucy for a lovely sunny walk and be back in time for a beer in the last of the glorious sunshine. In the evening I came down from making dinner upstairs to find Pete had dropped a large metal tub full of fire wood on his toe and was bleeding all over our nice white bathroom! Poor Pete was now in pain at both ends of his body. :(

Sunshine walking

Bilko high up in our big tree

Friday 18th

 

Market day yet again but we got up especially early and were in Chirpan by 9 this morning. We did quite a quick shop today as we wanted to be back with plenty of time to carry on building the wall. Back at home Pete did exactly this. I'd moved all the blocks and filled all the blocks with concrete yesterday so I was out of a job today. Instead I did a few chores and then did a bit of work on our seedlings. A few seedlings needed potting out and I also tracked down a few old sheets of glass (that came with the house) to use to cover the pots - the last few nights have got down to 0 degrees or below and I don't want the seeds to freeze. Hopefully I'm not too late and this will do the trick.

I have also planted (outside) a few varieties of lettuce. This is experimental so we'll see what happens. As well as that I also unveiled the outside tap from all the insulation and attatched the hose as we need to start watering the garden - spring is really here! Planting the veg out also means the chickens are not allowed to be free range at the moment - until we can block them from the veg patch (they've already eaten some of my flowers.) Pete also smoked and sliced his bacon so we've got several more packets in the freezer, ready for eating.

 

 

Covered in glass

Salads planted out

Hose is out!

Whilst I was doing this Pete was doing a fantastic job on the block wall and managed to get all of one side done up to where we wanted it.

During the day our neighbour, Hristo, came round to look at what we are doing and to measure the doors (he is going to make the new frame for us.) As we measured the doors we realised that we'd got the measurements wrong and the doors weren't going to fit into our current plan of the porch as they were taller than we'd thought. Oh dear. We spent a while figuring out what to do and THANKFULLY were able to change our idea slightly so they should be able to fit. This has worried us a bit though and we have now decided that we don't want to build the other side, or the roof, of the porch until we actually have the doors in their frame and we know exactly how big they are. Hristo is really busy with work at the moment so we don't want to pressure him into making our door frame - so annoyingly the porch is hold until further notice. We now just have a big wall at the bottom of our outside steps!

 

Once we'd sorted all that out and tidied up it was only about 4, but the weather was too good to carry on with any other jobs so we called it a day and cracked open a bottle of fizz and drank a few bucks fizzes! (This isn't fancy at all by the way as this particular sparkling wine cost about 60p.) It was a beautiful evening, and actually quite warm, so we decided to have a small bonfire to make a change from sitting inside. Pete's mouth is still aching and we've had to eat mushy foods all week, but tonight Pete roasted some potatoes with pork fat over the fire for dinner and they were bloody delicious.

 

 



Saturday 19th

Another beautiful day and we wanted to spend the morning down the road doing some gardening - the fruit trees needed trimming right back so we went down early in the morning to get it done. It turned out to be a much bigger job than we expected and were down there almost all day, it was nearly 3 o'clock by the time we got home with a van full of branches.

Hot day gardening

Despite Pete still being in some pain and us both feeling pretty tired from all the tree pruning we thought we'd not waste the afternoon and we thought we'd quickly build a new bottom step. We want to keep our outside steps (although we will build stairs inside too) so we needed to bring the bottom of the stairs around, as they are now currently leading into a huge block work wall. This was a pretty easy job - we just screwed together a wooden shuttering, held it in place with blocks and then filled it with hardcore and concrete. It was quite annoying to get up and down stairs all evening but we managed to do it - and with only one paw print in the final step.

Shuttering going up

And filled



Sunday 20th

So without the porch to be carrying on with we consulted our to do list (it's big!) and picked a couple of other jobs to get on with instead. We had an idea to dig out a few flat spots amongst the walnut orchard for tents and so wanting to concentrate more on the campsite this year we decided to start digging one of these. When I say we, I really mean Pete as I am not very good at digging. But I went up to the top of the walnut orchard with him and made a start on clearing the back fence - a job that has needed doing since we arrived (and long before for that matter.)

I helped Pete draw out the circle for the camping plot and then got out the loppers and started hacking away at the clematis.

Planning the plot with string

These are the before photos of the over taken fence



During the day our neighbours (the ones with the compost) came over to say hello and 'help' us with our jobs. This involved them watching Pete dig for about half an hour and then come over to me to tell me it was too slow to do this work with hand tools and they ran off to get their chainsaw to help me! Their chainsawing was incredible dangerous and scary but it did actually help quite a lot and got some of the bigger thorny bushes out the way in no time. We had a lovely day working in the sun and Pete's mouth was feeling a little better so he wanted to do a proper BBQ to celebrate and eat his first solid meal of the week! Because of this we finished up at 5ish so we could have our meal outside whilst it was still light.

 

Me with the strimmer

 

Help from the neighbours

Olds birds nest I found on the fence

Pete has done a great job starting to level the camping plot

And the fence after! Looks great!

 

We tidied everything away and I got the fire going outside whilst Pete prepared the food. M & D popped over just as we were opening a beer so they stayed for a drink and quick catch up. Once they'd gone we let the fire settle down and then cooked some delicious marinated chicken over it and ate it with salad and potato salad - yum yum yum yum. We stayed out for a bit longer but we were feeling knackered and had an early start tomorrow so went in, got clean and were in bed before 9! We bought a bucket of embers in from the fire to start the wood burner in the bedroom, which was pretty good we thought.

 

Sunset fire

 

BBQ

 

Monday 21st

We had planned to go to Chirpan today with Hristo so he could tell us what we needed to buy for him to make our door frame. He wanted to go at 7 so we could drop his wife at work, which was fine with us - although just slightly earlier than our usual start! The alarm went off at 6 and we were up and having a cuppa not long after that. It was a beautiful morning, although very cold.

 

Sun rising over the village

In Chirpan the shop was still closed to Hristo took us to a small local restaurant for soup and coffee. The place was great - full of people eating breakfast and just ridiculously cheap - we will definitely be back. We then stopped in to see Hristo's parents, who were lovely, and Pete was excited to see a few books by one of his favourite authors (Jack London), translated into Bulgarian, on their shelves

After this we got to the builders merchants and bought all the wood and bits we needed for the door frame. After visiting several more shops (including dropping off our broken lawn mower at the services) we headed back home. On the way we stopped off at Spasovo shop as Hristo said he knew of some good local wine - which we are always willing to try. It wasn't actually being sold in the shop - a man turned up and we had to follow his car to a house where there was a lady with a huge cellar full of wine! Although it was homemade this was the real deal - she had two types of red, one white and even one rose, and all were delicious. We bought several litres (about £1.20 per litre), after a quick chat to the lady, and happily headed home.

Back home we ate some lunch and were feeling a bit knackered as we'd ended up being out nearly 5 hours. But we wanted to build the second step so that upstairs was slightly more accessible. Again this was a quick job - just one plank of wood held in place and a couple of loads of concrete. I forgot to take an after photo so you'll have to wait until next week to see it - exciting stuff!

Ready to be filled

We also wanted to carry on with what were doing yesterday so mustered up the energy to get back up the walnut orchard. Pete managed to completely level the circle area for one tent - the earth still needs some working but once the grass (weeds) have grown over it should be perfect for a tent.

1st camping plot

I did a few more metres of the fence but didn't get so much done without help from the neighbours. Although having said that Hristo popped by to see what were doing and gave his advice on what I should do - apparently I was working way too fast and should just take it little by little. I can't win! We stopped working at about five and sat and enjoyed the view from the top of the field, even though it was turning into a cloudy evening. For the rest of the evening I have written the blog and we've chilled out in the yellow room.

 





Before

After



Views from behind the fence