Up on the roof....

... stuff is getting done by very brave men in hoodies.

Senhor Avellino and his team are working tirelessly to reroof our house. The good news is that most of the beams are in pretty good nick and haven't needed replacing.

As Tim keeps pointing out, it's a bad time of year to attempt a roofing job, weather-wise. And contrary to popular opinion, we DO have winter in Central Portugal - it's cold and wet. But the process of buying the place was so slow that we got quite behind schedule.

Luckily, we've been blessed with an unseasonably dry and sunny week, so all being well, we could be back on track to move into the house in April.

Next up: building the septic tank. Lovely.

Looks like progress to me...

A lot has happened since my last, rather miserable, post.

First, some men came with a pneumatic drill and started to break up the floor in the adega, where our kitchen and living room will be. Since the house was built into the hillside, there's quite a lot of sheer rock face involved.

But whichever way you look at it, the presence of a JCB and a compressor parked outside your house suggests that something must be getting done.

Then, this Monday, work finally started on the roof. In fact, it's progressing so quickly that they could be done within the week, guttering and all. I'm sending Tim up there tomorrow with the camera.

And now that things are coming along at a more satisfactory pace, I hope to be blogging more. But we're still some way off choosing paint samples...

Rain stops play at Gondelim

The scaffolding is up and the builders are ready to start on Operation New Roof - but it's been raining for days now. Weeks, even.

Still, I take some comfort in the fact that while it's -3 degrees C in the UK today, it's a positively balmy 2 degrees C here.

Until the new roof is on, however, all kinds of exciting stuff elsewhere in the house is on hold. Bear with us!