When we’ve moved…

For the last 12 months, it feels like every other sentence has started with ‘When we’ve moved…’ So, here’s a little compilation of what followed that phrase while we wait for the sellers to demolish the old home.

Yes, you read that right, there is progress since our last blog. We are now really in the final weeks of our wait if all is well. The forestry committee has indeed approved the plans! This means we are all go for the final stint of this very long wait. Three more steps to complete:

1. The sellers to demolish the old home – hopefully the builder is not on holiday!
2. The council to put a stamp on the license of the remaining buildings
3. Deeds to be signed and remainder of money to be paid

We’re not really keeping time anymore, because even the simplest things have proven to take very long. However, at least we now know there is an end to the wait. We are even somewhat hopeful to be able to move this calendar year.

Until then, we keep getting minorly excited about all the things we’ll do or have ‘When we’ve moved‘!

When we’ve moved:

👩🏼‍🍳We’ll finally be able to have a great kitchen that suits us again!

The current kitchen, technically, has everything you need in terms of appliances, but so little work space that cooking and experimenting isn’t much fun at the moment. Also, the hob isn’t induction but ceramic and really takes the joy out of cooking.

Storage space is at a premium (not just in the kitchen to be fair), and the cupboards SMELL of damp. Back in the UK we did have our dream kitchen, and could we have packed it up and brought it with us… we would have! When we’ve moved, we can design another kitchen! Or even two or three. In the house, the outdoor kitchen, and a processing kitchen for our produce!

👀We’ll have our quiet and privacy back!

The apartment is OK, but it is in the middle of the city. We have a rather large outdoor space, but we are surrounded by 3 and 4 floor apartment blocks that look into our garden. Not that we’re doing weird stuff in our garden, but it’s just the idea of being overlooked constantly. Also, there are MANY barking dogs around. The new house with its bigger distance to other homes and people at least any dogs will much farther away!

⛰️We’ll have our views and trails on our doorstep back!

Related to the above. Our current views are… buildings. Big. White. Buildings. Back in the UK, we had our evergreen Yorkshire hills! In the new home we’ll have an entire mountain range in the Serra da Estrela to admire in all the different kinds of weather across the four seasons! When we’ve moved, we’ll also have the trails right at our doorstep again, for hikes and for running. A lot less pavement pounding will take place for our runs, and so many new trails to discover for hiking too!

🌱We’ll finally be able to start living more sustainably!

Of course, there’s growing our own food. It’s been on the list for so long, but in the UK our garden wasn’t suitable, and the weather not very reliable to even start at a small scale. Here in our concrete garden nothing’s happening either. So with all the land we’ll have, we’ve already spotted and envisioned exactly where we’re going to grow our peppers, tomatoes, courgettes and SO. MUCH. MORE.

We’ll also have the space to process and store our produce! This will help us plan and feed ourselves throughout the year. And then there’s the other thing the UK didn’t give us a lot of: sunshine. So we’ll be looking to go as full-solar as we can over the next few years, and also make other insulation improvements all over the place, and installing things like a heat pump for better efficiency.

🍻We’ll get to brew again more often – and start growing our own hops!!

Even though there’s now a brew bubbling away in our en-suite, that is the first one in the last 12 months as we did envision this whole thing to go a bit quicker. We had deliberately decided to pause so we didn’t have to move FULL crates of beer and agitate them in transport risking them to blow, etc.

But, gawd, have we missed it. There are nice beers to be found, but brewing and drinking our own brews brings us so much joy! And on top of that, we’ll have so much space to potentially expand our efforts. Who knows, we might expand to a nano or micro brewery and see whether we can make it a side gig! So we’re looking forward to start growing our own hops too!

🛠️We’ll get to indulge ourselves in SO. MANY. DIY PROJECTS

DIY is fun. It is exciting. And it is an amazing hobby that we really got to appreciate when we did our van build. We have so many wonderful plans for the new home. From regular DIY to get the house up to the standard we want it to be, to more exotic outside projects. An outdoor living space. The ground floor of the house to be turned into a multi-work space. A brewery. All our food growing and processing set-up things. EVERYTHING.

Living in a rented apartment is so restrictive. When we’ve moved we can finally personalise again too. There are no paintings, posters or pictures on our walls here and it is SO bare!

🔥We’ll have central heating again – and two wood fire spots on top of that!

To finalise this list, one of the things we’re looking forward to most is that we’ll be having central heating again. Even though Portugal has the reputation of being always nice, especially in the North, that’s not always true. And we don’t mind. It’s good having seasons, having rain and having enough green around! But, the house needs to be able to deal with that. And our apartment does not have any form of heating. This not only lead to a very miserable (long) Winter and early Spring, but also to a lot of damp and mould in the home itself.

Even though we’ll probably not be completely comfortable and settled come this Winter… at least we’ll have central heating, and wood fires in both the kitchen and the living room to keep us warm after a day of work and/or DIY!