shestnayset

So, apparently I'm here in Bulgaria to renovate this funny old house? But judging by my last few posts, it might seem that my life has turned into a rakia fulled circus and the house has been left, once again, to fall into rack and ruin? Au contraire, take a look at my new dograma:



Yes, it might have taken 4 months, several arguments with the carpenter, a few threats about non payment and a lot of patience, but finally we have some freekin windows; and bloody good windows at that, slavu bogu. Pete is currently staining them up ready for the double glazed units to be fitted next week. A few more photos have been uploaded to flickr for those of you who have a slow day at the office (see links to the right).

With this boost spurring us on to 'get the damn thing finished' I thought it was about time for a boring post about the house, the whole house and nothing but the house (yawn).

As you can see, a huge mound of soil seems to have grown out of the ground in front of the house. That's because Sam and I have spent a considerable part of the last month digging out all the floors downstairs and removing all of the mud from the floor upstairs (yes the upstairs floor was covered in 200-300mm clay soil). This was not easy. This took a long time. Sam is still whinging about her fingers. After that, we scurubbed the floors/ceilings clean (ish) and shifted around 15 tonnes of gravel back into the ground floor to provide drainage and a sub base for our floating floors (more on which later). This photograph gives you some idea of the amount of much shifted - the pile of gravel on the left is about 10 tonnes the soil is the huge pile to the right:



We have also installed all of the waste pipes for the bathroom and kitchen linking them up to the septic tank in the garden. A trench has been dug for the water supply which is now located inside the house which would be helpful if we had some bloody water in the village. It has now been off for 4 weeks. Not very helpful.



We have also repaired quite a few sections of the exterior walls will clay mortar (thats mud to you and I) which is now ready for lime rendering, even if we are not and built a new step down into the main door to help us get some decent ceiling heights downstairs.



Needless to say, our programme has gone out the window. Days of pouring over my fabulously coloured excel spreadsheet has shown us that I definitely shouldn't go into project management - unless I have a much larger, highly skilled workforce, 12 specialist consultants and a least one jcb all of which I can control - not much to ask for really. We knew we were being a bit optimistic in wanting to finish by december 08, but it has become clear that with our extensive and highly experienced workforce of 2, we'll do well to have the interior, let alone the exterior ready for winter. This, i suppose is the challenge one must must face when taking on the roles of project manager, quantity surveyor, architect/designer and builder, in a foreign country where you cant speak the language and are unable to rely on suppliers and contractors who frankly could do without the hassle of actually having to do some work... the lazy bastards.

Still, we have re-prioritized a few things to increase speed and to save a bit of cash and reckon we have a reasonable chance of getting the place semi habitable by the end of the year. A bit of value engineering never hurt anyone after all did it? Changes to the plan include:

- less sophisticated heating system (aka. no radiators, just a wood burner in one room)
- fewer tiled floors internally (now just the bathroom and bits of the kitchen)
- 'floating floors' in the 2 bedrooms and hall way downstairs
- open doorways within circulation spaces.

Which all means that the building will be great in the summer and a bit chilly in the winter, which bearing in mind we haven't decided how to use the thing in the future, is probably a sensible decision. We are though, planning to install dual serpentine water heaters (dual powered by the wood burner and the electric which could be converted easily to solar later), a powerful wood burner with enough capacity to run 6 or 7 radiators (to be retrofitted if required), and we can always add a few doors at our leisure in the future.

Other proposals which didn't make the final shortlist included:

- open plan living spaces (aka knock down all internal walls to save plastering them)
- removal of first floor to reduce number of rooms by half
- 'rationalization' and removal of building foundations...
- ... and erection of a dome tent on the site of the former building.

To prove how brilliantly we are doing, here's a quick snap of our new bathroom and hallway which you can see is almost compete:



Off to buy a bath & sink on Monday and the free bog I got from a mate after rebuilding his dry stone garden wall should be in within the next 2 days - honest! Why do I sense doubters?

The good news is that our summer camp starts in just over a week which will give us a much needed injection of man power I'm sure. At last count, we have.... errm, oh yeah, one person coming over. Praise the lord for Darren 'yeah i'm bringin my cut off denim shorts and a sketch book' Clayson. We'll show em clays. S'gonna be immense.

As for the rest of you, excuses about holiday shortages, prior 'engagements', unmissable trade shows at the NEC (yes Collins thats you), redundancies, burglaries, lack of DIY skill, laziness, disinterest and dogs eating plane tickets don't wash. You will all be blackballed from my next venture: a nudist camp for recovering models with combined cheese dairy - unlucky!

Back in the UK for a flying wedding in cornwall next week - praying for some sun. If any of you change your mind (not about the wedding, about the work camp) then you know where to find me.

Off to the pool now for some sun, beer and a dip. Enjoy the floods - except you clays.

dvanayset

It’s May, it’s rapidly turning into summer, the Gabrovo beer festival is in town (with one beer on sale… woo festi-val) and I spent a day hungover on Sunday which all culminated to mean that I have spruced up the old blog. New colour scheme – oooh, new font ooooh and nuff new features, including a soundtrack to listen to whilst you read (unless you’re at work in a stuffy accountants wearing business salmon and a ‘wacky’ tie) and a poll, on your right, which will change regularly and help me make some very important decisions – so make sure you vote people (if for no other reason than to halt the rise of Dave and Boris, who I was disappointed to see has pussied out of the environmentally driven lawsuit with Thames Water yesterday… not a good start, even if he is hilarious)

Settling into Gabrovo now. Got a couple of mates down the local boozer who have been revelling in Liverpool’s untimely demise against Chelski in the champions league semis. Neither of them speak a great deal of English but we have managed to communicate/bond in a multitude other ways. They are both local boys and as such conform to local boy status, namely: they drink shit loads of rakia; they love ‘the maiden’ (that Iron Maiden to those of you without permanent black eye liner) and almost all “heavy metal”… accordingly I told them I was a Sabbath man which got me nuff respect… well, until they got the barman to put some on the tin pot stereo and I didn’t recognise it at all… not entirely surprising as I only know one tune (gonna have to bite the head off a bat or something to redeem myself); they’re also well into football… or at least they can name almost every team in the football league including Grimsby Town and Oxford Unite…oh no, they’re not in the league anymore are they? Furthermore, they cemented their place as local lads when they asked “do you know Samantha fox?” - “why?” I hear you shout as Sam stupidly did, “big tities” came the response, compete with mime. Not bad for two guys whose vocab otherwise comprises “Yeovil Town”, “Iron Maiden-Number One” and “fuck you Manchester United”. They still don’t believe that the former page 3 idol is now a carpet muncher (sorry awful expression).

Anyway, enough about that, I thought it was about time for an update on the old mud palace. So here goes: Pete and I have been digging out floors downstairs so we can stop bashing our heads every 5 seconds on the ceiling; we’ve built a small retaining wall to stop the front of the house falling down on us when we dug out the floors; we’ve mortared ridge tiles on our watertight barn roof and constructed new ceilings in the dining room and lounge – yes that’s dining room and lounge. Not that you’d recognise either of the muddy walled/floored rooms as such, but hey, we’ve gotta call them something. So pretty busy really. We are also in the process of getting quotes for our new double glazed windows – all 12 of them - and connecting the place up to the mains electric supply… wooo yeah. If we’re not careful, we’ll be putting a toilet in next!

Photos to prove I’m not a liar have been uploaded onto Flickr here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/welsbyinbulgaria

Also, check these guys out – been lovin’ the hotstepper this week: http://tinyurl.com/59hp2e

Back in the UK for yet more weddings in June so maybe see you there… please feel free to assist in my costume decision making process on the poll to your right (really plugging the poll).

Oh – and also, nuff respect to Taylor, Stevo, Claire and Mum for getting involved and leaving some top comments last time round. Salty cheese in the post.
Ciao ciao za sega e fsichko hubavo

deset

How many men does it take to change a roof? Two, me and Pete (with a bit of help from toothless Ivan, an 83 year old, to pass up a few ridge tiles right at the end – I always knew he was a glory boy).

It’s official, Pete and I have actually done something to be proud of. Our barn, arguably the best building on site, was in a sorry stake after we raided the roof for stone plotches to repair the roof on the house. Worried that it wouldn’t last the winter without a roof, we decided that our challenge, with or without Anika Rice (who I hear still gets excited when the chopper goes up), was to repair and re-tile the roof in 4 weeks. We decided to use 2^nd hand clay tiles, rather than insisting on more huge stone tiles, to take a bit of weight off and to make our life a bit easier. We put our maths and language skills to the test and bartered good prices for 1800 tiles, 75m of replacement timbers and a decent drill. We also visited a couple of quarries to buy sand and aggregate to mix up a bit of concrete which was interesting… there’s nothing quite like thinking you’re arguing over price when in fact we’re talking about volume and ratio calculations… we got there in the end. For those of you who watched The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, we bought our tiles from Uncle Peter who turned up for work in his xxs green felt blazer and crumpled top hat, on his home made petrol powered pedal bike – smooth.

So between snow storms we got our act together and got out into the cold in our best thermals and thinsulate to show the locals how real building work is done! And this is what we ended up with:

‘Undulating’ might be one way of describing it, ‘wavy’ perhaps? curvaceous even? Kevin McCloud would definitely call it ‘organic’. Straight lines are for architects and traffic wardens. Anyway, I like it and it’s waterproof which is all that counts.

Before I left, it’s fair to say that my accommodation arrangements were less that comprehensive and upon arrival, it quickly became clear that my back up plan (living in the van) was not really going to be an option with the temperature dropping to a “piss in your pants to stay warm” -7 at night. Miraculously though, an English couple in the village took pity on us and offered to put us up in their spare bungalow for a month! I couldn’t and still cant quite believe how lucky I was…not least because not only did they have a hot shower, flushing sit down toilet and heating, but the guy, Peter, an ex pub landlord, also turned out to be a legend in kitchen. I don’t know when you last had toad in the hole or stew and dumplings, but I can say with some certainty, not recently enough… get on with it… they’re amazing. So next time you’re passing through Burya, I can recommend a night at Peter and Sandra’s place (thanks a million).

While I’ve been playing at building, Sam has been doing some real work, training to be an English Language teacher in Sofia. At only 60-80 hours a week and her first teaching lesson on day 2 of the course, it sounded like a piece of piss really! So yet again, Sam has managed to out do me, passing her course and showing off by using apostrophes in all the right place’s. God I’m funny. It also meant we got to spend a bit more time in Sofia, which I like more each time I go.

So all in all, we’ve had a great time and managed to achieve shit loads. Lots of back patting all round: well done us.

Aside from the construction, and the self appreciation I’ve also been back on the trail of Bulgarian culture. Its a tough, salt laiden job but somebody has to do it. The highlight was definitely a 53^rd birthday party at which we were the special guests. A few glasses of home made wine and grape brandy later, it looked like this:

...good shit, chestit rozden den.

I’ve also decided to have a new feature as part of the blog: Myth busters, where I explain the facts behind some of the words most wondrous mysteries. First up, super models.

There is a reason that more supermodels come from eastern Europe than anywhere else, and on my last trip to Veliko Turnovo, I found out what it is: Carrots, shit loads of them. Sat in a pizzeria, chomping my way through a 12” diavolo with extra everything, I heard a girl on the next table order a salad, a carrot salad. It sounded like an uninspiring side dish, at best, but I guessed it might be ok to break up the mass of cheese on the pizzas. Little did I realise that a carrot salad could make up a whole meal, especially when it comprises just a huge pile of grated carrot. For 2 hours the girl sat, picking at her ‘salad’ no doubt enjoying every orange mouthful. She did at least have the dignity to wash it down will a full fat coke. It was obviously not as fulfilling as she hoped, as she only managed half of it – the fat cow.

I’m back in the uk for a while and will hopefully catch up with everyone. Back for more Bulgarian adventures in the spring if Tesco will give me the time off.

Ciao Ciao za sega

two

Here it is then. Chez Welsby... palatial isn't it?

Yes I know the roof is made of stones... and it seems to be missing the odd pane of glass... and it seems to have a tree growing out of it... and it is currently the home of hundreds of bees; but soon, this place will be the house of our dreams.

Once we get the solar panels and the dry toilet in, it might even be habitable. Then all we need to do is hook up some water, electricity and gas, add a pool and turn that front window into a projector room and we'll be sorted. Then, we can move onto the barn:

One

So... I'm off to Bulgaria with Sam, Pete and Merle for a few months and thought it might be wise to document it somehow.

I'm gonna try to keep a diary of what we all get up to, as well as producing an idiots guide to running away and restoring a house... so when the rest of the UK arrive here, which it seems is inevitable if the girl from scottish widows has anything to do with it, they will know how to raze a perfectly good house to the ground, how to grow some funny looking vegetables and learn that keeping bees is not the best way to diagnose whether or not you get anaphylactic shock.

Either way, it should be fun. Ill get round to uploading a 'before' picture, so that in 18 months time we three (cos merle cant read, and lets be honest here: people who think pets are replacemnts for people are just fucking stupid) can look back at what we have done. So with no technical knowledge, very little money and limited common sense we're off... god help us.