The house, MadAlex style

In previous posts there have been assorted references to MadAlex, the previous owner of this house.  During a recent sort through of house photos we realised that although we’d mentioned the interesting state the house was in when we bought it we’d never actually included any documentary evidence.

So, for your amusement and delight, below are images from the very first time we saw the inside of the house.  Think of these as an early holiday gift from us.

Before you peek though, remember, this is the house that MadAlex said would need “a little painting and perhaps some light replastering in one or two places“.

Of course MadAlex is an artist and it is clear that his perception of the world is very different to that of us non-artistic folk.

The living room

Open fires are lovely, especially in the cold weather we have up here in the hills.

Sadly this one didn’t draw properly so there was extensive smoke staining on the front of the fireplace … and the wall above … and the ceiling … and in the dining room … and the study.

The builder replaced the chimney to help the airflow and to prevent it setting fire to next door’s pomegranate tree – again.  That was one of the first of the stories fellow villagers rushed to tell us when we started work.  Apparently it was a talking point around these parts for quite some time.

Returning to soot for a moment.  Did you know, if you paint on walls that are sooty the paint just peels off again?  So, before you can paint, you have to scrub the walls and ceilings with a solution to neutralise the soot.  It is a filthy, tedious, unpleasant and back-breaking job.

Guess how we know?

The kitchen

Fitted kitchens are just so last season, no?  Really who needs more than strong coffee and food cooked in a toaster oven anyway?

On the right of the picture are industrial machine tools for cutting and stamping metal.  In the kitchen.

Once the existing kitchen units were removed the room was re-wired and re-plumbed, re-floored and re-plastered.  One doorway was blocked up and the windows were replaced.  The sink was re-located out to the garden.

And, the hole in the wall through from the kitchen to the bathroom to allow the washing machine to drain into the basin was blocked up.  Really, why bother with expensive plumbers when you could just use a hammer to knock a hole in a convenient spot and route pipework that way?

Speaking of which … behold the downstairs bathroom.  To be clear, at the point at which this photo was taken this was the only working bathroom in the house.

The bathroom

Aren’t those tiles lovely?  Sadly many of them fell off the wall when one of the builders sneezed so they all had to be replaced – such a shame.

The bathroom, just off the kitchen, was eventually split into a utility room and a downstairs cloakroom (a half bath to our north American readers).  The ceiling was replaced, as was the window.  The floor was dug up to allow new pipework to be laid as part of the re-plumbing.  The room was re-wired and re-plastered.

It’s interesting how time tends to dull the memory.

Builders at work

Sorting through some photos we came across a series taken by the builders while we disappeared off the island for four weeks during the renovations.

Note to people undertaking similar projects … its best not to wait until the morning before you leave to have vital conversations with workmen about things such as positioning of walls.  In our defence we hadn’t appreciated they’d get to that point in the project until we got back.  In their defence they had thought that they’d be able to call us if they had any essential queries.  We’d met the builders through a friend in a neighbouring village; they’d worked on his property, a lovely old village house, during which point the owner was either in residence or working on contracts in obscure locations.

Their logic was that if they were able to contact him in Angola, with the sound of gunfire in the background as they discussed paint colours, then we would be equally contactable.  What they failed to factor into the equation was that we were due to spend two weeks sailing across the Atlantic on the world’s largest sailing ship and for much of that time would be beyond all normal communication channels.

What, no window?

The misunderstanding, and the positioning of walls and the like, was dealt with quickly.  As a result the builders were able to get on with building out the upper floor and replacing the doors and windows while we were gone.

The photo above shows one of the builder contemplating the work needed to tidy up the window opening before the new window was fitted.  The new front door had recently been fitted.  Looking closely at the top right of the photo you can see some of the smoke damage from the fireplace … more of that later no doubt.

Rain … and priorities

The rain continues, and is set to be present for days to come.  This wouldn’t be an issue, we were expecting wetter conditions up in the hills, but for three reasons;

• We have no internal staircase
• We have a small house and 50 people coming for pre-Christmas drinks
• The garage roof leaks

We didn’t really expect the lack of internal staircase to be a huge issue.  It’s not like it rains often here, we joked.  Our plan was to keep golfing umbrellas upstairs and downstairs and use as necessary.  We even bought a pair of howitzer  shell casings to hold the umbrellas.  How’s that for forward planning, eh?

What we didn’t factor into the plan was that going to bed carrying a bottle of water, a book and assorted other daytime detritus and negotiating the wind whistling over the stone walls (whilst wearing a sling in one of our cases) whilst carrying a huge umbrella is risky at best.  So, we do without the umbrellas and run up the stairs getting wet on the way.

Such is life here in the hills.

Problem #2 is a little trickier.  We (actually Mands if truth be known, it’s only right she takes the blame for this one) had the bright idea of holding a pre-Christmas drinks thingie to let people see the house and reset all sorts of social obligations all in one.  We kicked the idea around a bit, decided we could probably get the essential jobs done in time so, what the hell – let’s have a party!

The only teeny, tiny fly in the ointment is the size of the house.  It isn’t big, certainly not big enough to hold all the people we thought we wanted to invite.  But December is often bright, if cool, so as long as the weather was fine some people would be happy drinking their wine and eating their mince pie out in the garden.  From there they could even admire that lovely outside staircase!

And then the plans went awry.  We issued invitations, we expected that some folks would have prior plans and not be available.  Shows what we know.  Apparently we failed to factor in the lure of the stone cottage with no internal stairs or our reputation for being fairly liberal with the wine bottle.  It’s even possible that word got round that Mands was testing new canape recipes on a subset of the group.  The upshot of all of this is that pretty much everyone accepted, and there’s no way that they’ll all fit in the house.  Which wouldn’t be a problem but for the weather forecast – a 95% chance of rain … and thunderstorms … and an inch of rain.

Which leads to problem #3, the leaking garage roof.

MadAlex had a garage built when he had work done on the house.  At least, that’s what we thought when we first viewed the place.  What appear to be large wooden gates leading out onto the road aren’t actually gates at all.  It’s actually a single unhinged doorway that doesn’t open.  We have a spot across the road where we can park the car so that hasn’t been a huge issue so far.

From time to time we kick about ideas about the garage (can you still call it a garage when there’s no way of getting a car inside) and the best way forward.  Between us we really can’t come to a decision … should we get it turned into an actual garage?  Should we leave the car parked across the road and keep it as a storage area?  Should we knock the entire thing down and incorporate the space into the garden?

We’ve discussed this, on and off, since we moved in and hadn’t made a huge amount of progress.  In the meantime this badly designed and built non-garage developed a leak … right in the middle.  Having reorganised the contents away from the wettest part we figured we’d bought ourselves some time.

And then, in the heaviest of the rain, part of the garage roof came down.

There's a hole in your roof, dear Liza!

So, to summarise; the weather is horrendous and may get worse.  We’re expecting 50 people who want food, drink and the chance to nosy around the house.  And parts of the place are collapsing.  Just how best to juggle these priorities are anyone’s guess.

Roquefort shortbread anyone?

Sunny Cyprus …

… isn’t always sunny.  Especially up here in the hills.

Our village is nestled in the depths of a narrow, but high-sided, valley.  This is the view that greeted us this morning.

Low cloud, grey days

There is low cloud sitting within the valley, right on top of our little village.  Anyone driving to the top village, along the road part way up the hill, would be looking down onto this cloud with us hidden underneath.

The forecast is for cloud, rain and thunder for most of the day.  The long range forecast shows much of the same for the next 10 days.  Today’s priorities may have to change – testing the open fire just moved up the list.

Ructions over measurements

As mentioned previously the non-squareness of the walls of this house provided some interesting challenges during the renovations.  Prior to moving in they caused us to re-work plans for the utility room when it became clear that things simply wouldn’t fit due to the allowances that had to be made for the quirky walls.

Upstairs proved just as challenging, but for different reasons.  When we acquired the house the upstairs was essentially an unfinished open space with a bathroom built into one corner.  Around about the centre of the room was a supporting pillar, and half way across a 3 inch step down.  To be able to plan where and how we’d divide the space we needed at least a rough plan of the space.

We spent hours and hours measuring and remeasuring the space … and nearly came to blows.

Hey! A drop in the floor. Shall we put a wall there?

The intention was to confirm the width of the space by measuring it in three different locations;

• Measurement #1: the inside of the back wall of the house + the depth of the bathroom
• Measurement #2:  wall to pillar + width of pillar + pillar to other wall
• Measurement #3:  the inside of the front of the house

All three measurements should have been the same; each was the long end of a rectangle measured at a different point, but there was a massive inconsistency, over half a metre.

We re-measured, and then measured again.  We shouted, we swore, and there may even have been a little throwing of tape measures and the like.

We were totally baffled.  If the shape was a rectangle then those three measurements should be the same.

Eventually the penny dropped.  The house shape is not rectangular, it’s trapezoid.

The front and back walls are (vaguely – let’s not go there right now shall we?) parallel, whilst the side walls extend out.  Essentially the front of the house is a little over half a meter longer than the back of the house.

No, once more, we have no idea why this should be so.

A handy trapezoid diagram

Anyway, our measurement #1 was ‘a’ in the diagram, #2 ‘m’ across the middle of the space and #3 across the front of the house ‘b’.

With hindsight it might be clear how we got to hurling insults before we figured out what was going on.

Note the 1000 litre water tank in danger of collapsing through the bathroom ceiling

Incidentally, a little research for a handy diagram of a trapezoid finds that it’s not a term used in North America.  Who knew?  For any American or Canadian readers the shape in question is an irregular quadrilateral!

The garden, mid-November

The weather is changing.  Daytimes are bright, sunny and hot out of the wind.  But dusk comes early to our valley at this time of year; the sun starts to disappear behind the hill to the west of us not long after 3pm.  The temperature falls quickly once the sun has gone but the house, with its half metre thick walls still retains the heat well.

In the garden the citrus fruits continue to ripen.  In England all our fruit came from the supermarket so it is still strange to us to see the different stages the fruits, particularly the small satsuma/clementine/tangerine goes through.  Right now we have plenty of green fruit alongside those that are both pale yellow and weak orange in hue.  We think it will be a least a couple more weeks before the first of them are fully ripen.

Meanwhile the lemons continue to ripen and plump up.  Surprisingly, it is our first full year of owning a lemon tree, we have a small second blossom and therefore some new lemons setting just as the early crop is finishing its ripening process.

Elsewhere the pomegranates are ripe to the point of splitting.  The 20 foot high yucca has decided that outward, rather than upward, expansion is the best course of action and is producing offsets at an alarming rate.  These need to be broken off and potted up for friends.   While we had our backs turned clusters of bulbs have woken up; best guess is that they are some sort of narcissi.  From last year we know that they are similar to paperwhites but rather smaller and without such a pronounced fragrance.

Finally Mands efforts earlier this year to dig up the arum lily at the base of the large pithari appear not to have been entirely successful; the lilies are back again.  The flowers, and foliage, are wonderful but their position right at the bottom of the staircase is dangerous.

Assorted photos below.  Click on any picture for an enlarged version.

Satsuma … clementine … tangerines?

Ripening fruit

Almost ripe & totally unripe side by side

Almost ripe

Pretty much there

Yellowing lemons

Just-yellow lemons

New lemon blossom

Ripe pomegranates

Yucca offsets

Lilies

A lone rose

Up on the roof

One of the unexpected perks of living here is that, for most of the year, our hot water is absolutely free.  Solar panels on the roof give us piping hot water for about ¾ of the year.  For the remainder of the time, usually between late October and early March, we need to supplement the work of the panels with an immersion heater.  Even in deepest winter, as long as it’s sunny, the panels do their best to provide hot water, and the immersion is not always needed.

Strangely Mad Alex hadn’t seen fit to install any solar panels so when we took over the property one of the first jobs was to get them, and all the assorted gubbins, in place.  From memory the entire installation cost about 2,000€ and should be good for 15 years or so.

Until about two weeks ago we’ve been enjoying unseasonably warm weather.  So much so that people were beginning to talk about the strange weather patterns, the lack of rain and the impact that might have on the water supply next year.  Then, things changed; a new weather system headed our way and the forecast showed that we were in for heavy and extended rain for a week or two.

And the forecast was spot on.  The sun disappeared, temperatures plummeted and it rained and rained and rained.  As we have no internal staircases that has made for some interesting trips to bed as we climb the outside staircase clutching umbrellas.

But, as well as providing the start of the overdue winter rains the new weather system brought overcast skies and no sunshine to work with the solar panels to bring us lovely free hot water.  But, no problem, we thought.  As well as shiny new solar panels we also have a shiny new immersion heater which, in half an hour, should give lashings of hot water.

We switched on the immersion for the first time on Friday morning.  Due in town late morning we both needed showers and after a bleak and cloudy Thursday there was no hot water.  An hour later we tested the temperature … stone cold!  A quick check of the external meter showed that, although the immersion was showing as being switched on, there was no evidence it was actually doing anything.

With time rushing on there was no choice but to boil the kettle a couple of times and make the best of a bad job … all the time cursing a brand new system that appeared to have failed on its first live trial.

As soon as we had done in town we called the electrician to see if he could throw any light on the problem.

Oh, he said.  That doesn’t sound right.  Did the electrics trip? No, John.  Hmmm, did the little light next to the power supply come on? Yes, John.  Hmmm, then we have a problem.

Since he was 20 miles away standing outside in the pouring rain, dealing with the electrical supply for a garden hot tub, we agreed he’d call back in a few minutes.

When he did it was to say that there was a second switch for the immersion.  But, it was on the tank itself.  If that hadn’t been set then it would explain the lack of hot water … but in all his years he’d never, ever forgotten to set the switch when installing so if that was the problem, and he really, really didn’t think it could be so, then in his words ‘he deserved a good kicking‘.

With no other suggestions to hand Ian decided to check the switch.  Torrential rain further along the coast ruined our plans for the day so we decided to stay home and tackle the lack of hot water before the rain reached us.  The roof, dodgy electrics and heavy rain didn’t seem and ideal combination.

So, Saturday morning saw Ian climb up the outside stairs to our upper floor ladened down with step ladders, step-ups, tool boxes, planks of wood and other assorted stuff.

First phase … to climb off our steps and on to the next door neighbour’s sloping tiled roof.   The planks of wood were essential to spread his weight to save us having to find a way to rescue him from inside the neighbour’s living room and make some very expensive and painful apologies for ruining her roof.

The edge of our upstairs, next door's roof, the next neighbour's roof

Second phase … a step ladder to take him up six feet onto the roof of the neighbour beyond.  The step ladder was balanced on the wooden planks, on the previous sloping roof, on slightly tired ceramic roof tiles.  Once on the second neighbour’s roof he could finally see the tank but couldn’t quite reach it.

Enter, stage left, one Ikea mini step-up.  It, balanced on wooden planks, on the second sloping roof, gave just enough height for him to be able to reach the electrics of the tank.

From there it was child’s play (albeit two stories up and rather precarious) to remove the retaining screws on the panel, detach the panel and discover …

… that John the electrician had indeed left the main switch turned off.

The switch, under a panel on the right hand end of the silver water tank

Poor old John’s ears must have been burning on Saturday.  Had we not subsequently heard the outcome of the story of the house with the hot tub we might well have been more vocal in our comments to him.  That house now has all the electrical provisioning for the new tub … but it also has some extra, and unwanted, ventilation.

Just as John finished there the storm instensified and the house was hit by lightning, blowing  a large hole in the roof.  It seems John is still fairly shaken by the whole thing so maybe we’ll let him off lightly about the off switch.

Meanwhile, we have lashings of hot water once more :-)

Ikea gets everywhere!

Just along the donkey track from us ...

Now, step a little closer …

2010 Ikea catalogue, in Greek

Our old friends Ikea are still doing a roaring trade here!

Not a square wall in the house

This new (to us) house is somewhere in the region of 200 years old.  Despite our best efforts it hasn’t been possible to get a better indication of exactly how old, nor be sure of the original layout.  We know it has been added to several times and, best estimates suggest, it is at least quadrupled in size.  That said, since the original building was probably only two rooms it’s hardly huge.  All told it is currently about 125m², about 1350 ft².

When we first viewed the house it was clear that there were few, if any, square corners.  ”No matter” said we, “It’s an old house, if we’d wanted regular walls and corners then we’d have bought a new house.”  It wasn’t until the builder started to lay the new floor tiles that it became clear just how far off square some of the walls were.

Internal doorway from the dining room to the kitchen

That led to some re-planning of the little utility room.  The space had been measured at a little under 2 metres therefore there should be no problem fitting a 60cm wide fridge freezer, a 60cm wide washing machine and a 60cm wide cupboard.  Logic, and a little simple maths, suggested there’d be a good 20cm spare space and therefore plenty of room to open the door to the downstairs cloakroom at the end of the room.

Once the room had been tiled though it became clear that the walls were shockingly off true.  Which wouldn’t be a problem but for those planned white goods and units.  Concerned that we would try and install them and have a problem Mandy spent one Sunday morning making templates of the units out of brown paper and then taping them to the floor.

Our concerns were justified … yes, they’d fit but it would be at the expense of being able to open the door.  Far from ideal.  In the end, and after much deliberation, we sacrificed the tall larder cupboard and made do with a unit two thirds the width.  Even so the door only just opens.

As we used square tiles, of assorted sizes, throughout the house it is now possible to see just how off-square some of the walls are.  Our trusty builder, Kieran, didn’t curse us too much … at least not in our hearing :-)

Inside the upstairs door

Inside the shower room

The garden, mid-October

The sun is shining, jobs are done for the day so before we put the kettle on for a well earned cup of tea we thought it would be useful to get some photos of the fruit trees in the garden and surroundings. The fruit is ripening day by day so it’s a good time to capture where each of the trees is in their cycle.

The small citrus tree is absolutely laden with fruit … they are tiny, but there are plenty of them.

Mandarins ... tangerines ... satsumas ... clementines?

So far we aren’t entirely sure what they are … mandarins, clementines, satsumas, tangerines?  Mad Alex allowed someone to strip all the fruit from the tree before we took possession last year.  For some time this wasn’t clear, leaving us thinking the tree produced no fruit at all, until we spotted two stray fruit lurking right in the very centre.  Clearly too hard to harvest for whoever took the rest of the fruit!  We picked the remaining two and they were lovely … not too sweet or too tart and not oversupplied with pips either.

So far it looks like we’ll get a good crop but at the moment over 95% of the fruit are still a dark green.  The occasional one or two are starting to turn to a pale green, then yellow before becoming bright orange in late November.

Just starting to ripen

The two lemon trees are also doing well.  The tree near the gate has larger, still solid green, lemons; the garage tree  has smaller but more advanced lemons which are just starting to turn yellow.

Green lemons on the gate-end tree

Ripening lemon on the garage-end tree

The pomegranate tree is presenting some problems with regard to its attractiveness to local wildlife, but that’s an issue for another day.  In the meantime the fruit that have escaped such attention are ripening fantastically well.  One of our neighbours has three trees in her courtyard.  Last year she estimated that they produced over 100 kg of fruit between them.  Far, far more that she could use or give away to friends, so she ended up bagging up the fruit and leaving them outside her house with a note offering them for free to tourists.

Near-ripe pomegranates

Just around the corner, down the donkey track, there is a derelict plot containing the remains of a partially renovated two storey house.  If anyone is looking for an adventurous renovation project then look no further!  In the absence of any care and maintenance pomegranate and particularly fig trees have been growing unchecked.  The figs are coming on well, with a mix of under-ripe and hard green fruit and delicious looking ripe purple figs.

Ripening figs

Yet more figs

Those with a keen eye may notice an interloper in the second of the fig photos.

The photographer gets no points for observation today having missed the tiny praying mantis posing on a branch just off to the left of the figs.

All being well, updates to come in due course!