Goodness, February has gone by in a blur, been so busy.

Hubs has been away a fair bit, Slovenia, then Athens, so a fair bit of alone time, which I don’t mind really, but sometimes you just need someone to help you move something heavy. Sometimes you end up doing the jobs you can do, rather than the priority jobs.

Priorities have been with the 2 conjoined upstairs bedrooms of late, one will be our dressing room (sounds posher than it is) it’s just where the wardrobes will go really, the other room will be our bedroom. In a stroke of monumental genius, all surfaces, ceilings, woodwork etc, have been painted in a lovely warm white emulsion, (it’s called lin), so no cutting in 🙌🙌. It does have a nice warm Mediterranean glow with the sun on it, and the bevelled edges of our ceiling that I was cursing while filling the cracks, do look rather nice. The wood floor has also cleaned up a treat with some cedar floor cleaner which as a bonus also smells lovely.

This room is now full of dismantled wardrobes, that 3 lovely gentleman managed to get up our rather awkward stairs yesterday. When they’re up, I can move clothes that have been in garment boxes for 5 months (yes we’ve been here 5 months) clear space in other rooms to repeat the process across the top floor.

Well, that was the plan….

My insta buddies will know because they actually view my stories, that there’s been little kitchen progress since the rewire finished in Jan. Well, we finally have found a joiner and former kitchen fitter, and he coming to do the final fit for us. Level all the units, secure them to each other and the walls, fit kickboards, top profiles, cut and fit worktops, make holes for hob and sink. Absolute music to my ears. Just one snag, he can do it in 3 weeks time! We have a friend staying in a fortnight (hi Jen), so I need to get the kitchen prepped and painted before Jen arrives.

Hopefully this won’t be too bad, typically though, lining paper doesn’t seem to be a thing here, and because we’ve had the walls channeled out for the lighting, and we’re painting the walls a very dark blue, I think the surface finish in here will be important. All hail the free over €70 Screwfix delivery! Fingers crossed will be here in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, we have worktops to collect from Leroy Merlin tomorrow afternoon, which is a whole other saga, but just file it under “because France”. Massive thanks once again for Le Papa, and his trailer which will be assisting in this endeavour. I’m sure it’ll pluie all over my raw oak tomorrow, because that would be Sod’s law but, I remain hopeful they won’t resemble boomerangs by the time they come to be fitted.

I was given some willow whips, so I’ve planted a living hedge toward the bottom of the garden, around some tree stumps that I thought would make for a nice seating area when the sun is going down.

The indoor temporary greenhouse is somewhat taking over, I think I might have 9 varieties of tomato now, plus several peppers, herbs, flowers for cutting, loads of lavender, then outside, 3 crates of onions, garlic, sweet peas, radishes, a donated rhubarb and some small fruit trees. The potager timebomb is ticking in the back of my mind constantly now, but kitchen needs to come first. By the end of the month I think the poly tunnel will be needed. Between now and then, a lot of neglected root laden soil needs to be turned over, and it’s backbreaking. I can’t understand how 3 times more root than the area of soil I’ve uncovered is possible. I’ve perhaps done 3 square feet, and the root mountain is massive. I think it’s time to find a man with a mini digger sharpish, at this rate not much veg will be going in….. You know you have issues when you’ve repurposed the shoe rack as additional staging……

We also had our plumbing quote for the main bathroom, so it came down to a choice. Do we want an epic bathroom and an unfinished rest of house, or a finished rest of house and a delayed master bathroom. Option 2 is by far the most sensible. We do have a shower room downstairs that looks like something a location scout would snap up for a snuff film. It will be made over to within an inch of its life, but having plumbing in place already means it’s just a paint job and replacing a cracked sink. My husband is not really feeling this, but it’ll all be fine. It’s totally the sensible thing to do. It’s just what happens when you have to add plumbing into rooms where there previously was none.

So, as I said last week, if I could channel the time I spend stood hand on hip, writing mental do do lists and blowing my own mind, into actual time spent actually doing the doing, the house would be done already. Hubs is away for another week now, and it can at times feel overwhelming. That’s the thing about living here, for every lovely cheese (and I’m someone that looks at Brie the way Bradley Cooper looks at Lady Gaga) or beautiful sunset, there’s a “where’s that smell coming from” and a “why are there ants on the kitchen worktop”. I still wouldn’t change it for anything.

TTFN xx