September

After three and a half weeks we have got our new computer monitor and are able to update the diary. Lets hope you don’t find it boring as it all seems to be about work at the moment.

Another month has gone by and still we battle on. If you’re thinking of buying a house abroad and think you will have a “Life of Old Riley”, then forget it. We, especially Ashley, have never worked do hard. He has been very busy with all of the little tiding up jobs, which sometimes don’t turn out to be quite so little. Of course we have to point out that this is not usual, it’s just that we moved into the house, by choice, before it was finished and have therefore given ourselves a great deal of extra work. Here are just a few of those jobs.

While the house was being constructed Vagelis made a hole through the sidewall of the house 10.5 cm round for the cooker hood outlet. Very good of him to remember, alas, when the hood was fitted the outlet pipe was 12.5cm. Another job for Ashley as there was no way I was going to let workmen crawl all over our new kitchen units. The position of the hole coincided with one of the main reinforced concrete beams, so not only was there concrete to tunnel through, but also the iron rods had to be cut. So, up the ladder he went, armed with a piece of iron off the site, a keyhole saw and a power drill to enlarge the hole. Two weeks later, sore knees from the ladder and aching hands, it was finished. Not two whole weeks, but a little every day. First only with the iron, then a friend offered us a longer, stronger piece of iron, which Vagelis sharpened for us. Finally we found a proper chisel made for the job, not really long enough, but made the job a little bit easier. It was very difficult, especially nearing the end as you can imagine, working in such a confined space, but he eventually did it.

The shower is now fully operational with the silicon all done and dusted, can’t tell you how pleased we were to get that job finished.

All of the paintwork has been touched up and everything looks clean for the first time; and now, with the addition of our newly acquired rug, our house is at last beginning to look like home.

Another lengthy project was our TV aerial. We dismissed erecting it on the side of the house because of the high winds and after a bit of thought came up with the idea of putting it on a tall pole. A friend offered us a pole, which had been hanging around for some time and Ashley painted it with dark green of course, to match the aluminium. He then strapped the aerial to the post and hoisted it into place after having dug a hole almost a meter deep, very easy to do in our beautifully soft ground. Three wires, two of which were bolted to our wall, supported the pole. Lets hope that it doesn’t fall down.

Today, while I have been working in the garden, Ashley has worked in the storage area under the stairs which lead up to the kitchen veranda; he has been busily laying stone on the concrete floor. Hopefully this should make it easier to keep clean, not that I intend hoovering down there, and keep the rain out.

The house itself inside is now completely finished, one of the last jobs, the fireplace was completed about a week ago. We offered to finish the job, rather than have more mess and Ashley filled and rubbed down the chimneybreast. He worked on it a couple of hours a day for about five days before painting it and now it looks perfect.

Vagelis has once again used his digger to drag the land around, trying as best he can to leave it as flat as possible for us. Now we are able to start clearing and levelling and have been doing a bit each morning as soon as we get up before it gets too hot. We are moving the larger stones and stacking them up against the walls for future use, raking and removing as much builders debris as we can before we start with any definite plans for the garden. This will not be a two-minute job; we will put a few pictures in the gallery so that you can appreciate how much work there is to be done. We have also put up fencing around our odd piece of land the sticks out from the rest, which I call my donkey paddock. It took us two whole days with the help of a friend to erect 75 meters of fencing, not bad! Properly done mind, three strands of tensioning wire, posts every two and a half meters, supports on the corners, the “full nine yards”. We might even go into business. Well, we should be able to take it easy soon, but no, come November we will have to start thinking about picking our olives again. That will be full circle, our first year of our early retirement, relaxing and enjoying doing nothing!!