Julio!

Birthday, plumbing and life lessons.

About this time last year we decided it would be lovely to get the family out for my 30th - mum and dad had already booked in for 2 weeks at the same place they stayed last year - which only sleeps 2 but has a beautiful pool for us all to enjoy, and have my grandma, brother and sister in law come to stay at the Casa for a long weekend. We booked flights and ferries and left the accommodation up in the air with a very optimistic idea that the place would be guest ready for their arrival… in our defence, when making this plan we had assumed we’d be back in Spain by March at the latest and hadn’t factored in the delay of the visa retrieval. So after arriving in May and having a look at the work that needed doing, it’s safe to say we were relieved that we’d provisionally booked rooms in the hotel in the neighbouring village..

After a weekend of jam packed activities, fun and non stop eating we waved goodbye to G-ma, James & Vicky, with the idea that we would spend the next week half working on the build and half enjoying the pool at mum and dads villa.

This plan changed rapidly as we got a call from the plaster man (official title) saying he would be ready to start by the end of the week noting if we weren’t ready by then, he’d have to delay til early September as they take a three week break in August*… Cue us freaking out - we still had the majority of the plumbing to do - which was dependant on our bathroom delivery arriving on time, 3 brick walls to build and a whole building site to organise. No surprise that our initial thought was to say “Not a problem!” with the idea of having to wait til September seeming like the end of the world. Luckily for everyone involved

we have been doing some growing up and we have learnt through plenty of trial and error that our initial reaction is not always the correct one, letting things simmer before making our final call. After weighing up the pros and cons of waiting or rushing through, we realised that there was no way we would get everything done in time and definitely not to the standard it would need to be… as in functional… eventually making the call to pencil the plaster in for the first week of September instead. It was one of those decisions that feels impossible whilst trying to make, but as soon as you commit to it you can feel the relief wash over you. With the pressure off of our shoulders, we decided to take the next week and a half as a holiday. Spent a bit of time poolside, exploring our local gems and enjoying some stress free family time, something you don’t realise you’ve been missing until you let yourself enjoy it!

*Taking weeks off work in August is a very common theme in Spain, they are all about the work/life balance, so if you’re attempting to get through to someone…don’t try in August..

The start of the month was so lovely that it only seemed fair that the plumbing would come around and smack us in the face, mum and dad set off back home on the 12th and by the 14th we were ready to pack it all in and follow them back to the UK - I write all of this to maintain the reality of this experience, it truly is the wildest rollercoaster and I think sometimes it can seem to be all fun and games, yet in reality we are testing ourselves to the limit tirelessly. Don’t get us wrong, this isn’t a pity party by any means, just a reminder - mainly to ourselves - that the reason it sometimes feels impossible is because it can be really hard! However by writing it down and looking back at what we overcome shows us, and hopefully you, that it is all possible - time is gonna pass anyway, everyday is progress even if it feels like failure so the secret is to just keep on keeping on! That message is most definitely for us to read at our next moment of despair..probably tiling?…

Right, back to the plumbing, I think the reason it challenged us so much is that this is the part of the project that when we bought the house was sort of half done with no instructions left on how to finish it. Therefore we had to make things work in ways that didn’t make a whole lot of sense with the design we’re going for. Days turned into weeks of trial and error, ensuring there was enough, but not too much of a fall on the pipes, sort of like marble run but with the stakes of getting it wrong a tiny bit more serious/gross. We did manage to keep going, through multiple meltdowns and eventually, with some guidance from a plumber friend, we completed the plumbing for the whole house… ignoring for now, that next year we’ll be doing it all over again in our own place… yay!

Ria Villaviciosa

Essentially July was Birthday and plumbing, a month of highs and lows but with plenty of progress made. Brett ended the month gaining a part-time job, we harvested a whole larder full of veg from our garden, saw live music in Gijon with friends, went slightly delirious *see videos below* and I turned 30! All in all I’d say it was a good month and one to remember.

Catch ya next time!

Ellie xx