Renovating the wine cellar (Adega) in Portuguese

After Christmas Rob decided as an "inbetween" job to start work on the Adega. As you will see from the pictures it looks like another daunting task and not for the faint-hearted (me) so I let Rob decide on how he wants to turn this old wine cellar into "our" indoor drinking den!!!!

Last year we took out the old wine making barrels as they were full of woodworm and disposed of them.
We are going to name our new Adega, Charlie's Bar, in honour of Rob's father, who is sadly no longer with us, we also have a second name to be known more Portuguese name for our locals!!!!!!, so one name will be done in spray paint and stencil and the other probably out of small letter tiles.
Again this has proved to be a tough job, we have had to kango out the floor to make more room height and to get it level and all the mortar for block laying and rendering has yet again been mixed by hand in a bucket, due to a lack of "battinera" cement mixer, knew i should have bought one three years ago!!!!!, anyway it keeps you out of mischief and works the beers off.
There will probably be around another full months work before it is completed, but at least it will be ready for the spring/summer shenanigans, so a couple of pics of current progress with the rest of pics when finished.

Bring on 2015 !!!!!!!!!!!!

Firstly Rob and myself would like to wish all our viewers and happy and healthy 2015!

This year our Christmas plans had to be changed as sadly we couldn't share it with our friends here owing to illness so it was just me and him and eat and drink! Traditionally the locals celebrate their Christmas on Christmas Eve with dinner at 8 pm opening xmas presents, followed by lighting bonfires in different locations around the village, midnight mass, then celebrating with copious amounts of vino and food, being consumed late through the night outside at the bonfires! However, we managed to fall asleep (the telly was boring!) before the late celebrations began to take place and unfortunately for the New Year's Eve celebrations as I was unwell so missed out on that too!!!
However, celebrating on your own means you don't have to go to too much trouble so we enjoyed a morning full of skypes and telephone calls with family and friends, ate a scrummy christmas dinner and then toddled off to the cafe for more alcohol. We have had a beautiful December mainly full sun and clear blue skies and Christmas was no exception. A few frosty nights have been endured but it does repay you with temperatures sometimes reaching 16/17 degrees where you can sit outside and enjoy the sunny rays.
I am posting a few pics of our christmas day to share with you !!!

Winter fish pond with lazy fish

Update on the loft conversion

Progress on the loft conversion has slowed down over the last month with the intervention of the Christmas and New Year celebrations and we have also been hindered by a late delivery of plumbing materials and fitting. However, we are still pleased with the way it is coming together and once the plumber has finished his side of things we can move on to the final works and closure on this job - (thankfully) is the first word that comes into my head!!! It has been a hard project with so much work to do as we started with bare brick and wood, but we are confident the result will be well worth it and hopefully friends and family will enjoy a stay with us and we may consider lettings.

Since our last blog we have completed the laminated flooring and most of the floor tiling, apart from a few tiles which need to finish off when the shower and the vanity unit are fully fitted. The plumbing for the pipework which has had to be piped downstairs to the water tank is almost complete and all that's left is fitting the toilet and sink basin and finishing off the electrics for the shower. The tiling and stonework on the stairs have been finished and once all the dust (which is always endless) begins to disappear the final sealing all the stonework can be done. A final coat of paint is needed and a few other little odds and sods need addressing and we are well close to completion. We have sited some furniture and fittings but until all the work and mess in out of the way this will have be finished off once we are are that stage.

Views outside from the velux window