A big push

I left you on Wednesday without having updated you about the day.

On Wednesday morning we had Deveta Sally (Sally 2) with us as we may be getting the floors in the last two remaining rooms replaced and waterproofed etc. soon, if we can actually get a quote off the guy who did the kitchen and who currently is not responded to the request. I don't really know why they do this; perhaps they don't need the work! He didn't take long to get on with the job and before I had even had a chance to get photos, due to being out on a material run first thing, he had made good inwards!

The kitchen units we were unable to use in the kitchen are still being kept for use in the garage and he had already moved them all up to the attic by the time I got back.

Kitchen units all gone

Stored nicely in the attic

Our Sally was beavering away and tidying up around the door edges, making sure we are as sealed as we can be for winter. This was pretty important for me, given the rat issues over the last couple of years. Thankfully now our living space is sealed, even if they do get in to the unfinished section, there will be nothing enticing them to stay as there will be no food within that area at all, so fingers crossed.

Beavering away

Bekir was also cracking on and it was on Wednesday I realised (and I think so did he) that he was not going to get this whole terrace finished before they had to go to their next job on Monday. A shame, but he was feeling the pressure; I could tell, so no point adding to it.

More tiles

Thursday was another work day for me and I don't mind admitting that this week has been a shock for me. Getting up at 6.30, collecting and dropping the men off, working and also tending to all the normal chores has certainly taken its toll. However, I survived.  The men were back to it and Sally 2 was making great progress with clearing the room.

Of course, there were still the old windows and frames to move in the little back room, so he was far from finished.

Windows

What else has happened? Well, the birds are still enjoying their freedom and mostly have spend their time scratching around underneath the fruit trees at the top of the drive, so hopefully they will have been eating lots of nice natural stuff to make their copious amount of eggs eggsellent. Yes, I did.

Enjoying the freedom

By the end of Thursday, Sally 2 had been making a great start to the window room. I can vouch for the fact that this would have been quite hard work as the windows, if glazed, are actually quite heavy and with broken glass something to be wary of, it was not a simple fetch and carry job. He made an excellent space for them in one of the rooms in the green building though.

Window stacking

Bekir meanwhile was making progress on the roof. albeit, not as fast as I hoped, but he was doing a good job and taking care that it was done properly, which is the right way. We want it sealed for winter after all.

Careful laying

Our Sally was working carefully also and steadily making his way through as many doors as he could. The most important one being to Room 13 as again, we will be spending a lot of our days (or at least mine) in here whilst we work.

Sealed!

Next was the second guest room and the attic.

Guest room

Attic

And Bekir was pushing hard up on the roof. He really stepped it up a gear.

Almost there

Friday was brought to me with nausea and an very upset tummy. It may well have been my curry which poisoned me, but I was not very well at all on Friday. I made a start on cleaning out room 13 but I was overwhelmed with sickness, so I spent a lot of the day resting, sleeping or moping around. I am a terrible patient.  The one thing I needed to distract Bekir with was the chainsaw, so on one of his trips down to get water, I grabbed him and got him to have a look. It had been starting when the Beard was home, but stuttered and then cut out every time. Bekir opened it all up and very, very carefully pulled back the filter to expose quite a bit of sawdust which had made its way underneath and slightly caked around the entrance to what I think was the petrol chamber. Cleaning it out carefully and washing the filter in pure petrol, it was back to business and was up and running again. Great for me as I have a huge amount of chainsawing to do in the coming weeks as all of our oak we had chopped last year is now dry and ready for the winter burn.  He improvised and dried the filter out on Julian's aerial.

Chainsaw clean

Aerial dried

A couple of other things happened during the week and I cannot remember what days, so here you are. A delivery of stuff the Beard ordered and an early gift from his parents for Christmas.  In the middle you will see a nest of tables which is actually made from the same wood as our dining table and matching metal joins. Beautiful. The photo does not do them justice at all. Not content with his lazy-boy, he also decided to join me in the geriatric area with his very own rocking chair. And on the left is a wall mounted chiming clock which is surprisingly less annoying than I had feared.

Deliveries

The end of Friday was welcome for both Sally's. They had both worked hard and achieved all they were supposed to. Sally 2's efforts in the men's room and end room were brilliant.

Cleared box room

Cleared men's room

Bekir had been cutting and placing the last of the edge tiles and was starting on the chimney edge by the end of the day. Quite a big push made on Friday to finish as much as possible. He had agreed to also work Saturday to seal it with the grout and keep it right until he could come back again next week.

Light at the end of the tunnel

I didn't get much done really with room 13 due to feeling very queasy, so I left it and decided to get stuck in on Saturday when I hoped to feel a bit better.

The two Sally's had a spare half our or so at the end of the day and continued to tidy around the place, so I asked them to help me by moving the last two doors for the living room and the completed guest room out of the corridor to avoid any damage. They are now safely stowed in the twin guest room, which we hope to complete next year. So much for a year off, eh?! lol

Saturday, no lie in.  Up and at it, still feeling a bit rough and off to collect Bekir. He was grouting to seal the tiles off in case of any rain (none in 3 months, but would be sods law the minute you lay tiles that it will rain for 40 days and nights).  He said that we would not make a start on the walls until next Saturday as it was more important to seal what he had put down - fair enough. I really didn't intrude too much through the day, only with his coffees and when he needed to pop to the shop for more grout. He just cracked on and at the end of the day, we had this:

Floor all done

I did do a little bit throughout the day and moved myself back into Room 13 again.  The temperatures are dropping at night and in the morning, so it is better to be in here just in case the fire needs to be lit at some point and also, I had help to move my desk back in again, so I took full advantage.  Looking cosy.

Room 13

I managed to eat on Saturday night and decided I wanted something tasty after two days of toast and tea. White wine and garlic spaghetti with prawns (the ones that cost about a tenner, yes, I bought them, Beard. I did. In four weeks you will have forgotten) mixed with our own peppers and courgettes. It was extremely tasty and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Expensive dish

Today has been spent mainly with a little lie in, a brief shopping trip to town to pick up some more vegetables for dinner and pottering around, sitting in the sun on the balcony, playing with the dogs, watching the chickens roam and seeing how much happier they are and eating this.

Roast dinner

I am going to leave you now so that I can relax a while before tomorrow dawns and the chainsaw will have to come out. I am hoping my limbs all remain intact.

Leka nosht.

Ax

We have workers!

I am back again with another update and as the title suggests, it has been quite a busy start to this week. However, back to last week to begin with.

As is my routine again now, I was working Thursday as I am back to a three day week until Himself arrives home at least, but most likely for good. The only exciting thing I have to report for Thursday was that whilst working on the house next door, the cement truck which turned up had slight difficulty in getting up the newly created lane. I think this was down to sheer weight and the afact that the land is so dry and dusty that he was unable to get a grip.  However, it turned out that as his wheels spun at the bottom of the lane, they were spinning on the pipe which carries our mains water from the main supply onto the land. Not ideal at all! The young worker was pretty good and when I told him it was my water (which was not now coming through), he got straight on the phone to the water board.

Ooooops

The company arrived in absolutely record time and the young worker brought some of his plumbing supplies down so they could get it fixed.  not a bad spud, that one.  However, it very quickly became apparent that these guys from the water board had actually only come out to read the meter. What perfect timing. They were here for a further 30 minutes or so and then they were gone, with my fully restored water pumping away happily. Excellent.

Perfect timing

Then it was to Friday. What did I do on Friday? Ah yes, the dreaded weekly shop and for some reason, I think I hadn't slept very well and had a bit of a lie in, which in turn meant that watering was later and all the other bits and bobs, so I arrived back and was starving.  A plate of cheese fixed that. I do love cheese and these are just fantastic.

Say cheese

Himself is to bring me back more of the ones I like best, so as instructed, these are those, love!

My favourites

The weekend arrived. On Saturday morning I decided that the chickens should be given a bit more freedom. It was a risk, with the dogs, but I carefully had the dogs under relative control and held all of their attentions whilst the chickens and ducks edged their way out, looking wary.  It was apparent that neither Rambo nor the puppies actually cared. Thelma had her ball, so that was predictable, Rambo sniffed and turned to walk back to his bed and Louise was the only curious one and tried to sneak up on them a couple of times, which I suppose is natural.

Free range chooks

Sneaking up

My memory is shocking, but I actually think I did very little in the way of outside work on Saturday. I know I had done a bit of a tidy inside and a couple of loads of washing, but beyond that, I was particularly lazy.

Sunday, I started out to make up for that and having emptied the pond on Saturday overnight, as it was absolutely horrid with algae and duck poo and I cleaned it out and refilled it. You can actually see the bottom (well not now, but then you could!).

Clean water

I also had a task to go through and be ruthless with all of the seeds that we have and bin anything that is out of date. Turns out that the majority of them were, but I could not bring myself to throw them away as Our Little Lady may actually be able to do something with some of these - she has a magic touch for growing - so I am going to see if she wants to try.

Many seeds

On Sunday I did the watering round a little earlier than normal so that I could grab half an hour at sunset just to relax and see it. I don't think I have actually watched a sunset in a good couple of months, not just because I am busy in the evenings, but also the evenings are much shorter now as well. Beautiful. I was happy as.... well. Happy.

Finally, a sunset

On Saturday, I think, the carpenter had called to say that he was coming with the final batch of internal doors that we ordered with him at the end of May! There were ten in total and a couple of concertina style ones for the guest room (which I do not seem to have a photo of, but I will ensure I get one for the next update). Here they are arriving. How exciting.

Doors!

They wasted no time in unloading and letting the driver get away and leaving the man himself to do his work. Now, normally the old frames would have been removed and our men would have helped him with knocking through any additional brickwork etc. but sadly he had to do it all himself. No complaints, he asked for a crowbar and away he went!

Unloading

They are all slightly lower than the originals, about 10 cms, but this was, from what I gathered from his illustrations, because the wood came in 4m lengths and therefore each door was 2m high. Made sense not to add 10 cms to the height and therefore leave the remaining wood too short, creating more cost. They like to be cost effective, these Bulgarians.

First one in

I was pretty busy with the carpenter around, just because he was clarifying a lot of stuff and having quickly discussed a few things with Himself in Belgium, we agreed most of them early on.  However, I was back and forward a lot of the day with him.  I also had a very welcome visit, eventually, from Chaz and Ivan who had been down doing a little bit of shopping locally.  They were due around 10.30am and so by 11.30 I called them to check all was okay. The lazy blighters weren't even within an hour of town and still had to go to the shops.  So much for my promise of lunch! I scoffed some ham from the fridge to keep me going and finally we sat down at about 3pm! for lunch, Needless to say, I had a small snack that night and went to bed early. Was good to see them though.

The reason I was in bed so early was that Bekir and Sally were coming back for the rest of the week to tile our roof terrace before he real rain, wind and cold starts. This is a high priority so that no moisture gets down behind the insulation which is not sealed up top yet and won't be until all the tiling is complete. So great to have them back and they understood when I said on the phone that it was very important to finish that one job. Excellent.

Of course, that meant that not only did I get to see the sun set this week, I also had the pleasure of a beautiful sunrise (and an hour of pitch black prior to that).

Red skies

7.30am on Tuesday and I set off on that familiar journey to get the men. It was great to see them looking so well and they were pretty spritely after their break away. although Sally was still "Goray dollo". He does make me laugh. Literal translation is "up,down", which would be the equivalent of our "so,so".

Whilst I was away, some little brats had found a packet of cotton wool pads, hadn't they. And they looked so pleased with themselves as well.

Cheeky imps

Until I told them it was not what cotton wool pads were for.

Sorry imps

I had started on the Monday evening to clear off the metal shelving units that we had in the corridor and which held all the preserves from the last few years. The carpenter needed the shelves moved before he could tackle the door frame, so I got on with finishing that first thing so I would not be holding him up. There would have been the same again if He had been here this summer. I freeze stuff, I don't do jams. It's the processing of fruit that I hate, so fiddly.

Preserves

Tuesday arrived early and so did my hunger, so once I had got the men back, after a trip out to the builder's yard to get some materials, my tummy was growling. I decided on eggs, because they are such a treat and we never have any in the house at all (this is a blatant lie and the fact is I cannot keep on top of production, so I may end up freezing some for baking).  Poached egg on toast.  There is no better breakfast, or brunch as it was at that stage.

Breakfast fit for a Queen

It had threatened in the forecast that there would definitely be rain, 100%, and it was not wrong. However, it barely managed to wet the dust. Never mind, it meant I was not let off with the watering again. Shame!  Thelma was less than impressed as well.  She went outside, squinted at me then ran back between my legs and into the kitchen.  Fair weather puppy. Louise didn't care at all. She was lizard hunting.

What is THAT?

So the men were back. Sally was systematically following the carpenter around and prepping the gaps around the doors for cement and also, bless him, clearing all the dust and additional rubbish created when the old doors were removed. Such a tidier.

Sally!

Bekir on the other hand was up and on the roof terrace starting the tiling as requested. He wasted no time and thankfully, the rain did hold off and he was able to crack on.

Bekir!

This was the almost offender. Impressive colour, but sadly, full of hot air and it passed by without many droplets.

Incoming storm

The last two doors were in and Sally had done a quick brush around before they left for the day. What a couple of days!

Svershi

I am not going to update about today just yet, but there will be more photos to follow showing the progress throughout the week and hopefully, the final look at the weekend.  Stay tuned.

Leka nosht.
A xx

Meanwhile, back in Bulgaria

Apologies for my recent lack of updates. The truth is, apart from work and a few bits and pieces, not much has really happened. I have been struggling to get back into my routines since my three week break and I am trying to set that right this week. Let's see.

I left you in a bit of a hurry in the last update because I was tired and had much unpacking and tidying to do. I still have! But I will try to update you on some of the few things going on.

One of the first things I did and didn't mention when I got back was to get myself into the garden and harvest some of the hundreds of peppers we have here. This is a Belfast sink:

Pepper harvest

I packed a load of ice in there because I was trying to keep them as crisp and fresh as possible until such a time in my day when I got a break fro work for enough time to process some of them.  The first lot were being pickled, so they were cut in half, de-pithed and de-seeded and popped into a sterilised kilner jar with peppercorns, garlic and pickling spice (I did two, one without garlic).

What a pickle

The third batch, after some research, again were de-seeded and de-pithed and sliced into casserole, curry and stir fry size bite pieces and frozen for just over an hour on a baking tray with anti-stick paper to aid the removal and packed into freezer bags ready for use. I liked this method best. It was easier.

Frozen solid

So the big arrival was on Thursday night/Friday morning when an hour earlier than expected, the Beard pulls up to the Old School and caused chaos. The dogs in the village were barking, our dogs were barking and all I was trying to do was get some sleep! I did, but not before I was up to greet him with my best sleepy face and a hug. Was so good to have him home again, albeit very briefly.

I am known to like a little bit of blue cheese and having inspected the local Belgian cheese whilst over with him, I had asked him to bring a few back. He did. A very blue cheese, infused with lavender of all things! It was actually very nice and we both enjoyed it along with a small piece of each over lunch the next day.

Very blue cheese

The Friday consisted of a brief shopping trip, some tidying up of the mess the logs made in the wood store (him) and moving of several large and heavy planks of wood for the raised bed to their drier store inside.  This was quite hard work, although they were much lighter now having dried out in the sun for a few months.  We had a lovely evening and went out for tea, but we were both tired from the broken night's sleep and headed to bed quite early. I won't go over all the details, as he covered it in his own post, but I did allow him into the kitchen to help with the banana and walnut cake that he requested to take back with him.  Here he is crushing his nuts.... (not even sorry).

Nut crusher

And the final sprinkle.

Finishing touch

Most of my afternoon was spent in the kitchen and we experienced for the first time what a really excellent social area this will be. We chatted while I baked and cooked a lasagna for dinner, me in he business end and he on his lazy-boy. Perfect.

Requested dinner

Sunday morning was a bit gloomy, both weather wise and in mood. There were some sad faces and soon enough it was time to wave him off again. Six weeks. And counting.

Obligatory goodbyes.

Puppy cuddles

The puppies were all set for Belgium!

Quite happy to go!

Sunday was left feeling a bit meh. So I did very little. I think I watched some film or other and huffed and puffed and did not sleep well.

Monday arrived and I was determined I would do something constructive. The spud towers need emptying, so I made a start. A bit of a disappointment again with these, but never mind. We live and learn. The yield was not as expected and nor was the size of potato. It was also hard work as all of that dug out soil had to be relocated. I stopped about a quarter way through due to the heat and generally not feeling the love for it. I did take a harvest and have some for dinner as chips and they were tasty, obviously. I will finish this task off throughout the week.

Spud harvest 

Low yield

What else have I done? Work mainly and cook a curry. That is about it. However, tomatoes, peppers and chillies all from our own garden. Not to forget the almost finished garlic. It was ok, if not a little too spicy, but I ate it then and I will eat the remaining batch tonight. Second day around is always nicer anyway.

Curry

In other news, the ducks are now both off the Christmas menu after laying their first eggs in a couple of months! Looks like the local goats will have to be on guard again!

Two in 36 hours

I am going to leave it there for this update as the leftover curry awaits and a very patient puppy (Thelma) with her ball which will need to be thrown a few times before play time finished for the evening.

I will try very hard to keep you updated more regularly and IF we have the men back, which is still uncertain, I will certainly be more regular with the posts.

Leka nosht.

A xx