by Helen | Feb 12, 2018 | Lifestyle
Today has been a beautiful day, weather-wise. Yesterday, we had brilliant blue skies and sunshine all day, but man, was it cold! And, last night, when we returned home from a local restaurant, the inky-black sky was littered with sparkling stars, like we haven’t seen since the heady days of summer.
Because we aren’t overlooked at all, we don’t have curtains or blinds at the bedroom windows (but we do have the obligatory shutters so when you want darkness, you can have it), and because we are high up, we can see the weather rolling in. And this morning, we woke up to fields of white, as the snow came down from Slovenia…
We did worry, when the snow started falling heavily, that we may be snowed in, especially as we don’t live on a busy main road. However, our worries were unfounded as Croatian efficiency – brilliant when it happens – swung into action, and soon a snow plough was trundling up and down the road, making sure it was clear at all times. Once we had navigated our access, out of the garden, we were on our way, out on a snowy expedition…
Cleared roads…
by Helen | Feb 11, 2018 | Renovation
It’s the weekend, but that doesn’t stop our builders. Give them their due, there’s some work ethic being displayed here! We *think* that the major drilling work might be over for this phase of the house renovation, so whilst Misko & Edin got on with the cabling and first plastering of the ceiling, we were finally able to begin the process of cleaning up a little bit. By Saturday evening, we actually had a living-room, of sorts, back…
Although it mightn’t look it, this has been a weekend of progress. The pipes, casing the new wiring, have all been plastered in, as have the new water pipes. The new step is in and the concrete has been laid on the floor. Tomorrow, the exciting stuff starts to begin, with the plastering of the walls and the laying of the underfloor heating. We think it’ll still be a week or so before the kitchen itself is installed, but at least it’s taking on the shape of a room again, rather than a construction site.
Meanwhile, we’ve also been busy, with a bit more DIY work going on in the main bedroom. The new ebony stained floor looks amazing, and we’ve taken things a step further by staining the light bed frame to match.
Still a long way to go on this bedroom, but it’s looking a whole lot nicer than when we first moved in. Next up is new lighting, painting of the beams. building storage space inside a big recess and sourcing Moroccan style doors. Oh, and hopefully, the best bit. A free-standing bath! All coming up…
by Helen | Feb 6, 2018 | Renovation
It’s been a while since I’ve recorded anything about the kitchen renovation, simply because nothing massive – or Instagram worthy – seems to have happened recently. But actually, a lot has happened and we are hopeful that the dirty, grimy work is now almost over. So, where are we up to?
Well, still camping out kitchen-wise in the Well Room. Still eating and wearing a constant film of fine dust. And still shivering as icy blasts blow through newly opened holes. But, big progress is being made, even if it’s still the messy, smashing up and drilling kind of work. The new window is in, the newly exposed ceiling has been boarded out and plastered, ready for fine sanding and skimming, the tubing through which the new electric cables will be fed are all in position for sockets and new lighting, new plumbing has been installed, the terrazzo floor tiles are up, ready for the self levelling concrete to go down and a new step has been made, into the kitchen.
For most people, the above will look still look horrendous, but we think we’re almost onto the good stuff. Plastering, new concrete window cills, installation of sockets, lighting and then underfloor heating and new boards, followed by painting before new kitchen is fitted. All sounds easy-peasy but bet we’re still kitchen-less in a month’s time!
Still, the joy of walking into the kitchen, up that smaller step, is making it all worthwhile currently…
by Helen | Jan 30, 2018 | Renovation
Who’d have thought stairs could be so problematic? To be honest, I’ve never really given stairs a lot of thought, because they’re just…there. But our stairs need a lot of thinking about, because they’re pretty unusual. We have one set going upstairs from the living room, and another going down into what will become The Snug, from the living room. They are both open staircases, and I read on a website that these…
provide a sense of freedom, as open stairs do not feature risers, allowing you to look through the staircase enjoying the rest of an interior…
All well and good, BUT when they have been quite poorly installed, and the treads are very narrow, and there is no handrail and the banister at the top of the stairs – to prevent anyone falling – is very rickety, all of a sudden, that “sense of freedom” doesn’t quite seem a selling point.
We’ve looked at having both sets replaced, and maybe it’s a language thing and we keep getting lost in translation but we’re finding it to difficult to get across what we want. And, for some reason, stairs (or the construction of), seem to be prohibitively costly in Istria. We originally had someone out to quote on concrete stairs. My dream, but these must stay as a dream as we wouldn’t be able to afford to eat if we went with his quote.
But, if we are to live a comfortable life and be able to get up and down the stairs with ease – and be sure that our guests will be safe – we need to arrive at a solution. Currently, they are quite awful – half finished, cheap looking and fairly poorly fitted. It’s a job which has been added to the ever-growing list and which we are fairly confident will be shunted down when other projects become more of a priority. In the meantime, we’ll just watch our feet and try not to climb or descend after a drink too many.
by Helen | Jan 28, 2018 | Renovation
Although our house is quite old – we think parts of it are over 200 years old – and is quite traditional in structural style to many of the stone houses in Istria, we are determined to stamp a contemporary feel on it. Apart from The Well Room where the floor is stone flags (therefore very beautiful, but extremely cold in the winter), and which will be dealt with a separate project, the rest of the floors are fairly recently laid pine boards. Fairly recently, as in within the last ten years. As no-one has really lived in the house, they’re not in bad condition – but have never been treated. This is good for us as we don’t need to do that awful sanding, but they are ripe for a refresh, especially as they are all of that golden-ish colour, which we don’t really like.
Pale pine boards about to have a make-over…
We’ve systematically gone through the house, with our paintbrushes, white-washing all of the walls, which were largely bare stone. Again, lovely – but too much of it and too cold. So, with white walls and white ceilings, we decided that certainly in our bedroom, we wanted to take the floors very dark. The room is big, with exposed original beams and a very high vaulted ceiling, so we figured we could go dark on the floor. Rather than paint (which we’ll be doing downstairs), we decided to stain and varnish the boards. Having seen some boards which had been treated with a walnut coloured stain, we went for this colour. Or so we thought…
DIY/building/renovation is as big in Croatia as it is back in the UK, and so we have absolutely no shortage of B&Q-like places. Our language skills are currently not good enough to go local and independent when shopping for DIY related things, so off we went to Bauhaus, in Pula, purchasing what looked like walnut wood stain, from the colour swatch on the tin and from what we could glean from our translation app. However, when we finally started to stain the boards this weekend, what a disappointment! The colour could only be described as the honeycomb colour of a Crunchie bar. Even more “golden” than the boards in their untreated state…
The disappointing honey coloured stain…
The original, unstained boards are to the forefront of the photograph, the boards stained with “Walnut” to the back. It was pointless even continuing, as there is a lot of floor area to cover and it just wasn’t right, so there was nothing for it, apart from to hotfoot back down to Bauhaus in Pula. We were going to have dark floors and after a bit of googling, decided the only thing to do was opt for an Ebony stain. And hurrah, it has worked!
The colour we wanted – “walnut” – is called “ebony” here. Lesson learned for the future…
There’s still a long way to go – this is only a third of the floor space, and we then are then going to hard varnish it for extra durability. The floor will then be done – and we will hopefully be ready for the next stages of the bedroom renovation/transformation. The plan is a free-standing bath (woop!), with shelving built around it and then building storage into a big recess, with Moroccan style wooden doors. Fingers crossed it all works out, so that finally, we shall a have bedroom which is not just a dumping ground for clothes. And, with such a high ceiling, we’ve gone for two over sized pendants – they’re only from IKEA and may, at some point in the future, be replaced for something a bit more original, but currently, just the thought of accessorising the bedroom is sufficient…
by Helen | Jan 27, 2018 | Lifestyle
I’ve never really been green-fingered. I’m very impatient when growing anything from seed, as I want results right NOW. When I want a riot of colour in my garden, I want it immediately, but I know it takes longer for seeds to germinate and bulbs to push themselves up through the spring soil. Although I am trying to be a whole lot more patient and bulbs are being planted, so if I sit on my hands, we will have snowdrops, and hyacinths and crocuses and aliums and delphiniums in the spring. However, I have decided that nature will be given more of a fighting chance in our house – but I also know my limitations and knowing that I will forget to water and nurture any indoor plants, I have had to opt for the sensible option. Succulent. Easy to grow, and hard to kill, I believe…
Crassula – there’s a reason why it’s so widely grown, and that’s because it’s virtually impossible to kill…Low maintenance, and don’t require fussing over, and still look good. They are also forgiving of over-watering and other mishandling…
These sound like my kinda plants. And I think I’m also doing good too, because the ones I’ve sourced, are from this company – and I like what they say :
The Kokodama Foundation is supporting children of less privileged communities in Sri Lanka.
The little half globes that they sit in are like coconut husks, which are handmade of natural fibre, sustainable and “fair made”. I even did a little bit of creative stuff myself, when I plaited some twine to make one of the plants in the window, hang longer than the other one. Maybe nature really is inspiring me…
by Helen | Jan 24, 2018 | Renovation
One of the more unusual features of our house is an internal well. A working well, at that – we know when we’ve had a deluge as we can hear the rain water roaring into it. We don’t know how old it is, or whether it was originally built inside the house. Our builder, from his knowledge of things around these parts, says it’s certainly more than 100 years old, probably a lot older and was probably outside the house. Meaning that at some point, perhaps when owners came into a bit of cash, they extended the house around it. A very unusual decision, we are told, as the well would most probably have been the only source of water for the village. So, this structure has real history and stories attached to it – and is beautiful. Just entirely impractical for our way of living. It sits in the middle of the room, taking up quite a lot of space, so what we can do with this room is very restricted.
It’s been used as a temporary decorator’s table, and at times has looked quite pretty…
But – it is still in the way. We were also noticing, over the colder months, that patches of damp were beginning to appear on the walls. No surprise when you live above a chamber, full of water! So, Misko, our builder came to the rescue – and to whom nothing is ever a problem.
Armed with a small pump, a length of tape and a hose, he arrived yesterday to begin draining it. It doesn’t look the most sophisticated set-up, but it’s working! The water level has dropped so much, that with a powerful torch, we can see now (over 24 hours later) see the floor of the well, and the side walls which are becoming exposed as the water level drops. In the reflection of the water, we can also just about make out the arched roof of the well.
We hope that by tomorrow, the water will have drained and the pipe down which the rain water flows, will be diverted – we’ve had nearly a week of sunshine, but tomorrow rain is forecast and we definitely don’t want any rainwater getting in again. It will also mean that Misko can get down into it and we can finally find out our options.
Option 1 is that the chamber walls are false and can be broken through, potentially opening up another room. But also potentially opening up a whole host of unforeseen issues, aside from the fact we’d have to create an internal access down into this room. Or, if we win the Croatian lottery, access from the outside in.
Option 2 is seeming to be the much more practical – and I think, in the short term, much more beautiful – solution. The orange piping in the picture above, actually encases electricity cable, installed by the previous owners. We should ask them what their plan had been for the well, as you wouldn’t go to the expense of installing this kind of electricity supply without a plan. We suspect it was maybe what we are planning – having the shell of the well removed (easier said than done, especially as it wider than the front door) and re-positioned outside, in the garden, and then covering the access hole with reinforced glass, and having it lit up from below.
However, first things first. Our stonemason arrived to dismantle the well and rebuild it outside the front door – on a Sunday morning no less!
However, as delighted as we were with the removal and relocation of the well, it did leave us with one small issue, which we have to get our heads around pretty quickly, as if it not resolved, it could be a danger. The issue of a hole in the floor of the well room, and a ten metre drop…
by Helen | Jan 15, 2018 | Renovation
In the house we’ve bought in Istria, we have two bathrooms. Sounds like a bit of a luxury, doesn’t it? But, both are very small and both are poorly laid out. The house had previously only been used in the summer, and more recently, less frequently, so not a great deal of attention had been paid to these two small rooms. However, we think bathrooms are important places and think they should be places to really unwind and relax. And, when we have guests we want them to experience something quite beautiful. Our renovation budget is not huge and with a renovation comes unexpected costs. Who would have thought we’d have to pay in excess of £500 to increase our electricity power supply recently? Not budgeted for as we weren’t aware that we’d need to do this, so a little bit less in the pot to spend on getting the house the way we want it. So, we need to be creative – and find people who can help us realise our creative dreams.
We have done a bit of work in the bathrooms, but the time is coming for this to be done properly. The downstairs bathroom is just off the Well Room and so needs to be carefully thought out. We have toyed with the idea of getting rid of it, but having had guests stay, we’ve realised that a second bathroom is very useful, just not with the layout it currently has. The toilet is positioned almost opposite the door, and the shower cubicle is squished into the corner opposite the window – it has a plastic tray, a plastic folder door and a manky shower head. All in all, despite what we’ve done to tart it up, it’s not a room I relish spending any time in.
We want to replace the traditional door, which opens inwards, to be replaced by a sliding glass door. Obviously not transparent glass – something along these lines, which was in a hotel in Rome.
The upstairs bathroom is tiny. Originally, we had thought about sacrificing one of the bedrooms to make into a larger bathroom, and making the small one (which adjoins our room) an en-suite, but this would have left us with only two bedrooms. So, again, having tinkered with it ourselves, we now need to get creative and get the professionals in.
The bath is a half size bath, sitting under the window, so right in the way. The sink is in a recess, opposite the toilet – where these two sit facing each other, we originally thought the bath should be. But then it would still have be a fairly small bath and this meant that options for relaxing were curtailed. Then, we mulled over a free-standing bath in our room (which is the biggest bedroom we’ve ever had and so definitely able to take this) and a walk-in shower in the upstairs bathroom, where we were going to put the bath. So, I’ve been spending some lovely time searching online for free-standing bath inspiration…
This means that the two small bathrooms can be designed much more effectively, without having to shoehorn a bath into one of them. Whilst we don’t want to totally scrimp on kitting these out, we do need to be mindful that we can’t go wild, and so we have to plan very carefully to create a stylish, small wet room type bathroom. But, as ever, budget is key, so we think and plan, very cleverly and creatively, over the coming months, to realise our bathroom dreams…
by Helen | Jan 14, 2018 | Renovation
During December we left the house in the hands of Misko and Sergio, the plan being for them to get as much of the dirty work done in the kitchen as possible while we were away. Although they kept in contact regularly and sent photos of progress, we quickly realised that they weren’t going to be as far on as we’d all hoped, on our return. Even though we’d discussed in detail where sockets and switches were to go etc, unexpected things obviously turn up – and when you are in a different country it’s hard to make decisions based on these new factors. The main problem experienced was the beams. We had originally wanted these to be covered with plasterboard and eventually plastered and painted, giving us a very linear look to the new ceiling. However, the beams are very old, the house is very old – and as happens with old things, nothing is ever straight. To achieve the look we wanted, the “boxes” around the beams would have had to have been much bigger than we originally thought and just wouldn’t have looked right. We can see the problem now that we are back, but trying to resolve this over the phone, just wasn’t working, as we couldn’t see the problem. So, we arrived back last Friday at 9pm – and to our surprise, our builder and plasterer were still working. Think about that. 9pm. On a Friday night!
Next morning, in daylight, we got to assess progress. The exposed original ceiling had been boarded out, and tubing had been installed for the new wiring. The new window, and its beautiful cream stone exterior lintels, were also in – and it looks a thing of beauty! You can see to the right of the new window where there had been an original small window. The new window is actually where a big fireplace had once stood, explaining why it looks a little off centre. If we’d opened it up to the size of the fireplace, it would have been central, but huge and that would have meant we’d have had to have had a new window made. We figured that the whole house is irregular, because of the stone construction, and so a little more irregularity didn’t really matter. We’d also forgotten how much chaos and dirt and dust is created – so our first day back was spent trying to restore some order…
Now, a week later, much progress has been made, not least because we’re back on site and can now once again make decisions quickly. The biggest decision that’s been made is that we are leaving the beams exposed, apart from the one above the new window, which will be boarded out and house three of the dimmable ceiling spotlights. The rest of the beams have been treated for woodworm and these will be undercoated and then painted in a light matte grey. We got the paint for the walls and ceiling back in England, from Farrow & Ball, and brought it over with us – as the rest of the house is completely white, we decided to go dark in the kitchen. More of the colour choice later…
However, we’re a long way off painting just yet! Sockets and switches have been marked out, and lighting has been decided upon and marked out too. We’ll have dimmable spotlights around the edges of the ceiling, with a beautiful concrete pendant, which we brought over from England, and is still safely bubble-wrapped, above where we’ll have a breakfast bar. There will also be lighting under shelving and to the entrance to the kitchen, a new lighting feature which will hopefully be quite funky.
The flooring and underfloor heating (a necessity in our kitchen with thick stone walls, not a luxury) have been purchased and the floor tiles will be coming up this week. We’re expecting a lot more mess, as we need to drop the floor by 2cms, so that when the new units are fitted, the original kitchen window, which has never opened properly, will finally open. Now, that will be a luxury! The kitchen we’ve chosen has a concrete look & feel to it, and with set against dark walls, could be cold-looking, so we’ve opted for a warm looking floor. All very exciting, as we think this week will be the week when we start to see the real changes…
In the meantime, we’ve created enough order to once again have a working kitchen. It’s all moved into the Well Room (more of which in a later blog as we’re planning some big changes here!) and we think this will be more than sufficient for the next few weeks. And, we can finally cook, fairly dust free. Always a good thing.
by Helen | Nov 26, 2017 | Renovation
A few days on from the last renovation update and a lot has happened, kitchen-wise. The stones from the kitchen window hole have been saved and the red bricks which were below the chimney have been taken out. These will be replaced by the stones which have been removed, meaning that the front of the house will now look cohesive. The overly elaborate pot has been taken off the chimney above the kitchen, and the chimney capped. We’ll not be using it and it seemed a bit too “top heavy” but now looks balanced, and just right.
Health & safety does not seem to be a huge consideration out here – Misko and Sergio clamber the very precarious looking scaffolding, like mountain goats. And, not a hard hat in sight. Plenty of cigarettes, though!
The long-awaited for Istrian stone window surrounds arrived yesterday – and they really are things of beauty. Milky white/cream and just like marble, they will hopefully be really complemented by the new colour of the window frames and shutters. The bottom piece has gone in but we must be patient and wait until it all sets before the other three pieces can be installed. In the meantime, we just keep admiring these beautiful slabs…
