Move to Bulgaria: Weeks 18 & 19.

So to begin I want to say to all my regular readers (mum) I apologise for not updating last week. The week just went by so quickly and although we have been relaxing and enjoying ourselves I thought it didn't really make for good blog writing, so I rolled it over and now you have two weeks in one! Woo!

Family photo!

As I said we haven't really been up to much so I'll do a brief summary for this post, with mostly pictures. We have more friends arriving tomorrow so are looking forward to that! :)

Last week Tuesday - Sunday

So this week we mainly faffed about the house doing a few odd jobs. We were feeling at a bit of a stand still as we couldn't finish the ceiling in the yellow room until the lights were in and our amazing digging man is no longer working for M & D so we can't borrow him to finish our septic tank. We did have a nice chilled week though and met up with S & G and DW a couple of times.

D has been extremely busy but promised to come and fit our lights by the end of the week. In the meantime we drilled through the beams and put all the wires in place so it was ready when he arrived.

Bedroom

Bathroom

We have been trying to make the house a bit more liveable and clean.

Tidy tidy.

Before

After

All organised upstairs - how long will this last!?

Garden stuff...

Mad amounts of veg from lovely Baba Villay.

Chilis going red in the sun.

Collecting hollyhock seeds to plant next year.

Our first tomato!!!

A few bits in the yellow room and bedroom.

Grouted our mosaic

Finally finished the skirting in the bedroom, looks much neater now.

Fishfingers, chips and peas. Yum!

Had a lovely evening out in Chirpan with DW, S & G.

Standard measure of gin!

S & G lent us their planer so we planed our big table and it looks fab, and we also started on our shelves/wardrobe thing in the bedroom. Annoyingly, in Bulgaria, you don't seem to be able to buy wood in a particular size - you just have to have what they've got whether it's warped and twisted or not. This meant we couldn't buy all the wood we need for our shelves and would have to wait until the wood yard got a new delivery. But the start looks good anyway!

Mmmm smooth table.

Beginning to make shelves.

Cleaned the chicken coop.

Made a 'day bed' outside using palettes. The idea was to eventually use them inside as our sofa, but we are quite liking having an outdoor bed! At the moment we are using layers of rugs on top but we plan to buy some foam when we next go to SZ.

Perfect sunset view from the day bed!

Chirpan Church looking pretty.

D came to fit our lights on Sunday morning. And not just in the yellow room - we have lights in the bathroom and hallway now too. AND our sockets are finally connected in the bedroom so we don't have everything running off one extension lead!! Bloody exciting times.

D at work.

Pete being helpful! ;)

Why we didn't try and do this ourselves...

One light in the bathroom (more to come but at least we can see!)

Light in the hall!

Best of all, lights in the yellow room.

Sunday afternoon/evening we were invited to S & G's for a roast dinner! S had gone all out and made the most amazing meal ever. Pete ate four helpings and then had to excuse himself to go and lie down on the sofa to recover - it was like Christmas day (but very warm outside)!! S had also made delicious banoffee pie for pudding. God we were stuffed. It was a really great evening, ending sat around the bonfire in the garden. Perfect.

Me and S & G's doggy, Magenta.

The works!

Individual banoffee pies!

Monday

So we wanted to crack on with the ceiling in the yellow room but after talking to S & G the night before we were convinced we needed to get some serious bug spray on the beams first to get rid of anything that might be eating away at the wood (we had done this once already but the beams and ceiling in this room were particulary bad.) So we spent the morning in Chirpan doing a bit of shopping. Back at home I got to work spraying the bug stuff whilst Pete started to remove the rust from the old woodburner with his new wire brush drill attachment.

Rusty

After I'd finished and Pete had got bored we thought we would use the rest of the afternoon to finish our shelves (we had found more of the right sized wood today!) The longest thing was the plane both sides of every plank, but once this was done it was relatively simple to put together. We were going to paint it white, but now it is finished we have decided that we rather like the wood. We also used some of the old water pipe from the house to make the clothes rail - upcycling yeah. We think it looks pretty good. :)

Melon break from planing.

FIN

From the front!

Had a chilled evening watering the garden down the road and having an early night.

Tuesday

So today we actually started work on the ceiling. The batons were already in place so it was a quick and easy job to measure and cut the plasterboard and screw it in. Before we started work though Pete put a bolognaise on in the slow cooker. The smell was wafting all day and making us hungry.

Done in no time!

When we'd finished we foamed all the small gaps and then left Pete decided to start plastering. Whilst he did that I gave the barn a much needed tidy up and then went down to our paid job and did a few hours gardening.

Couldn't actually walk in the door before this!

Plastering all done - Pete is a pro now :)

Eating the delicious slow cooked bolognaise for dinner.

Wednesday

I spent all day painting and caulking the ceiling. I didn't think it would take so long - but it did. But once finished that was it - second room in the house was DONE! Then it was time to start decorating.

Painting...

Finally finished! :D

In the evening we met DW for a beer at the village bar. For the first hour or so our peaceful evening drink was disrupted by some guys chainsawing logs right next to us - ahh the quiet village life!

Thursday - Friday

Spent the next two days sprucing the place up for our next guests and getting more stuff into the new room. We have decided not to make it a kitchen just yet as it is too nice - we'll have to just keep cooking in the horrible room upstairs. Yesterday I pickled some eggs, as we just can't eat all eggs we are getting, and this morning we of course went shopping in the market. Pete also has been very crafty and made a little side table for the bedroom, as well as started on a homemade BBQ. We also had, this afternoon, this biggest rain storm we've had in weeks. It was glorious to feel the rain and cold again, although our walls did start leaking again - annoyingly we can't do anything to stop this until the roof gets fixed in September. We are just hoping the weather clears up before our friends arrive tomorrow.