After exactly one month I am back in Spain. Do I need to say that I am very excited to see the progress in the house…
Me and Elsa arrive to our house after sunset. We took our car from the airport, two hours delayed and without my bag – after a long search process found at Arlanda. No problem – I have some clothes stored in the new house. We park the car outside, switch off the Securitas alarm and start to open the heavy temporary gates to the yard. The big house looks a bit scary with its big dark windows. We look forward to come inside, turn on the lights and unpack our stuff, tired after the delayed flight. But – why doesn’t the code of the padlock that I used so many times before work this time!?? Finally we manage to create a hole big enough to crawl through and enter our new Spanish home. Not very graceful first entry.
The house looks amazing – so much work done since we left it in the end of May! We turn on the lights in every room and just walk around. Am I dreaming, is this beautiful house really ours!? Our building team has almost finished the main floor and the master bedroom upstairs with only few installations still to be done. The light arrangements I have planned are just as beautiful I hoped they would be. The view outside is breathtaking.
An hour later I leave Elsa in the empty house and return to the airport in Alicante to pick up my sister and her husband arriving with a late flight. They are staying two weeks and give me some help with cleaning, fitting and furnishing the house.
Before we left the rented house we moved over a lot of stuff we bought so we would not need to start from zero. We got kitchen-ware, vacuum cleaner and coffe machine, beds delivered by Danish design in Altea and other important stuff to survive first days in an almost-ready house. We have two chairs but no table to start with – the table ordered from Concept is arriving only in August.
When I see the kitchen in the heart of the house, complete with worktops and lights I’m filled with gratitude: it looks better I could hope. We had chosen the worktops of natural stone, named Perla venata in a big stone factory filled with thousands of slices of stone cut from huge blocks. Each slice, even from the same block, clould look different so you cannot really know how the final result will be. I can say I’m really satiscfied with the choices we have made – everything is so functional and works so well together. Our kitchen designer from Concept in Altea has done such a nice work with our kitchen, it for sure is the kitchen of my dreams!
While it is nice and quiet inside the house, at least after the electician and plumber have finished their works in the bathrooms, there is lot of action going on around the house. Sometimes things happen TOO fast – yesterday I almost got a nervous breakdown when I discovered that during the quarter of an hour, while I was talking to our building manager regarding a mysterious wall in the garden built during an hour I was away, on the other side of the house too many balcony railings were installed with insane speed. It resulted in some extra work: the wall was taken down as well as the railings that were reduced to half of the length. I have discovered that Spanish builders love steep and narrow steps and lot of railings while I like more open garden with practical pathways. I will keep my eye on them….
I thougt only we people of north talk about weather all the time. I was so wrong! The world you most frequently hear here right now is CALOR – the heat. I feel sorry for the guys working in our garden in the hot sun building stairs, walls and painting the house. I guess they look forward to their vacation in august, when it is even more calor. I wonder where they go for vacation, Iceland maybe?
Luckily the climate in the house is perfect thanks to the air condition and the new fridge has an ice machine. I am not suffering at all. While Elsa is sweating at the Russian masters ballet camp my days float in a pleasant way. I wake up at 8:00 to the sound of starting cement mixer and jolly voices outside. Our building guys look always happy (even if I make them redo some projects) and work hard all day long except during their siesta when they lay down on the floor of our future gym. My days pass planning at the computer, visiting furniture shops and findig suitable lights, doors etc.
In the evenings when the workers go home we spend good time at the pool and have dinners at the terrace.
This morning the view from the livingroom window was a bit different:
Time to go to sleep, a new day arriving soon! Buenas noches!
The Spanish house 