Keys Corner » John

Small update – more photos

John — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:24:45 +0000

View of the kitchen from the dining area

Most of the little jobs that were left to be done around the house have been completed now, so I thought I’d add a few photos of the interior of the house as it now is. Yesterday the hanging lights in the office/studio were mounted by the electricians (on the picture above click through to the picasa album and scroll forwards 2-3 photos).

It has been really windy the last few days here, which has put put paid to my attempts to get the water in our pool under control. The pH is too high, and the water is cloudy. But right now, as fast as I have removed debris from the surrounding plants the wind has added more. As it has also rained quite heavily (better than the snow in the rest of Europe), it is difficult to keep the pH value in the recommended range at the moment.

While I was looking for information on how to get the pool sorted out (it suddenly started going green with algae), I came across this posting on ebay, which is quite amusing but sums up the problems you can have getting it sorted out.

Dementiaville

John — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:33:27 +0000

The first thing that went through my mind, when I read this article in The Independent, was that “Dementiaville” must be just like the village (Portmeirion) which the British cult TV series “The Prisoner” was set in. The Prisoner, an involuntarily retired British secret agent, was held in a village at an unknown location without any obvious guards, which he was unable to escape from:

The newly approved €20m (€20,37 ()m) housing project is to be built next to the Swiss village of Wiedlisbach near Bern and will provide sheltered accommodation and care for 150 elderly dementia patients in 23 purpose-built 1950s-style houses. The homes will be deliberately designed to recreate the atmosphere of times past.

The scheme’s promoters said there will be no closed doors and residents will be free to move about. To reinforce an atmosphere of normality, the carers will dress as gardeners, hairdressers and shop assistants. The only catch is that Wiedlisbach’s inhabitants will not be allowed to leave the village.

The Prisoner used to be an absolute “must” for me to see when I was at school – even better than “The Man from Uncle“!

Low tech

John — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:13:42 +0000

Our new bell

Close up of the bell

When the electrical work for the house was planned, a front door bell was foreseen, but since visitors need to ring at the main gate from the street to get into the garden, we thought a bellpush at the front door was unnecessary and had the bell and bell push removed. However a couple of weeks ago, Pepe suggested going to El Rastro (flea market) in Valencia and looking for an old hand bell to hang up instead. I went along with Pepe last Sunday (the market is on every Sunday, next to the football stadium) and we found the bell you can see above – Pepe negotiated the price down to 15 Euro for me! We think it looks great next to the front door, even if we don’t believe it will ever be seriously used!

What would actually be more useful, would be an extension to our existing bell from the front gate, so that we can hear it when we are in the garden at the back of the house. Didn’t think about that when we were planning everything!

Wet…

John — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:10:22 +0000

It has been raining heavily for most of the last 24 hours here. The pinkish blob in the lower left of the first photo is a rose, which I hope is enjoying the rain!

Yesterday Iberfone swapped out our router and phone converter box, and replaced the no-name Iberfone router with a Linksys WRT54GL, which is a decent piece of hardware. Since then there have been no more lost internet and phone connections.

The first interior pictures of the house

John — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:25:41 +0000

Ruth's favourite occupation of the last few days

In the last few days we have assembled quite a few IKEA cupboards and shelves. The worst part of the process is that IKEA sticks an IKEA label onto almost every piece of the kits. The most difficult to remove was the safety warning that children can strangle themselves on the cord for IKEA roller blinds. This one (above) took over an hour to remove (we tried label remover, olive oil and alcohol to get them off – nothing worked effectively) – they really don’t want their warnings removed!

However we now have several of the rooms more or less sorted out. So I have uploaded the first photos of the inside of the house after we have moved in. More will follow in a few days time.

Pictures of our garden

John — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:17:59 +0000

María Pedro took some good photographs of her work when she was at the house just before Christmas. (If you click on any of the photos, you will see a slide show with larger pictures).

They show off the garden nicely and give you an idea of how the garden looks at the . . . → Read More: Pictures of our garden

Our postal address in Spain

John — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:16:30 +0000

Today we managed to get to the post office (no big feat, it is open daily from 8:30 to 20:30 hrs Monday to Friday, and Saturday mornings, but we have spent nearly all our time working in the house) and organise a post office box.

We had gone to the vast expense of buying and installing a letter box next to our drive entrance, but a couple of test letters we sent ourselves never arrived.

Someone who lives in the next village told us that the post doesn’t deliver to Bixquert, which is where our house is. We were pretty sceptical, but today we went to the post office in Xàtiva, and they confirmed that there is no postal service here! So we have rented a post office box (an “apartado”) and will have to drive into town every few days to see if anyone has written to us! Don’t send anything to the street address of our house – it will be returned to sender (if there is a sender address on the outside) or destroyed.

The nice guy behind the counter did offer the hope that they may deliver in the future – but couldn’t say when that might be.

The address to use for post to us in Spain is on our contact page near the bottom.

End of project

John — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:20:23 +0000

Casa la Abuela: In the background the arroz al horno, waiting to be served

Yesterday the work on the house was finally completed, we are very pleased with the result and think everyone involved has done an excellent job.

People told us we were mad to build a house in a country where we don’t speak the language and don’t know the local ins and outs of the whole process – it’s risky enough building a house in Germany. But we have been very, very lucky. Our lawyer, Fernando, introduced us to Antonio (the architect) and he in turn put us in contact with Pepe and María (the builders) and with María Pedro (the landscape architect). Pepe in turn had a really competent and helpful site foreman, Abel. And Antonio’s brother, Enrique, handled all the day to day issues for us most competently.

So today we took them all to a restaurant in Xàtiva, recommended by Pepe, for a “Projektabschlussessen” (end of project celebration – common in Germany, at least in IT projects). We went to the Casa la Abuela in Xàtiva and we all followed Antonio’s lead with arroz al horno for the main course. Very yummy!

The project team (left to right) - Abel, Enrique, Antonio, Pepe, Maria Pedro, (Ruth), Maria

Afterwards we went back to the house, where the photo above was taken. We hope very much that we will be able to keep in contact with everyone, as they are all really nice people.

We are still assembling furniture in the house and unpacking our belongings stored in the garage, but that activity is also coming to an end and when we have tidied up a bit, we’ll post some photos of the interior of the house. Then we can lean back a little and watch the plants growing!

Christmas Mussels

John — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:31:52 +0000

Mussels on sale in our local supermarket today

I have just been down to our local supermarket to buy some last minute supplies before Ruth arrives, and the fish counter was overloaded with nets of mussels. They seem to be very popular at Christmas.

Landline works now

John — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:37:09 +0000

We have been waiting for the last two weeks for our phone to be connected by Iberfone. We were given a number, but Iberfone couldn’t get a free port in the exchange to connect us. Well 5 minutes ago, I had my first call on the phone – not that Iberfone had called to tell me it was connected, but just that someone decided to try the new number.

Good news, as it means we can speak to people on the phone over Christmas without running up a huge mobile phone bill!

Update (24.12.2011): The phone works some of the time. Particularly in the evenings it often stops working. Iberfone are investigating. But if you want to contact us over Christmas and don’t get an answer on the phone, try skyping us instead!

Update 2 (03.01.2012): The electricians who installed the network came today and discovered (with support from Iberfone’s technical hotline) that they had made a mistake wiring the router into the rack. It looks like everything is now working reliably and correctly. The phone should be working all the time now!

“Installing” the last major item

John — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:17:33 +0000

Pouring the concrete for the drive

Today the last major item was delivered for the house – the concrete drive!

The lorry turned up at about 8 o’clock this morning, and pouring and finishing took until 2 p.m. The concrete was smoothed off after it had been poured – over 20 tonnes altogether – and then sprayed with a fine coat of coloring material which sinks into the surface, permanently coloring it a light shade of grey. After the surface had been sprayed, the surface was stamped under plastic moulds, so that it looks like it is make of stone tiles.
(More photos of the last few day’s activities if you click the photo above).

Progress in the garden

John — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 22:15:49 +0000

Sand being spread out in the garden

Today there has been a continuous coming and going of tipper trucks, delivering sand and gravel for the garden. I think we’ll need to buy a couple of wide rakes to keep the sand clean and tidy – we are going to have a garden which is a bit like a Japanese garden! As you can see, the sand is being spread over woven plastic matting, which lets the rain through, but is supposed to prevent weeds from growing in the earth below the sand.

In the house there is progress too. The cabling of the racks for the network is completed, and instead of using a 3G mobile phone modem stick (expensive!), I am now using our WiMax internet connection via our LAN.

By the way – you can see more photos in Picasa, if you click on the photo above.