The count down is on! We are moving! This year!

There were times that we kind of thought this would never happen. When we made that offer in August 2023, we were told that on average, a house purchase/sale takes about 3 months. 4 months if you are a bit unlucky. We joked a bit about it taking longer than the 6 months that we had in our promissory contract. Surely that timeframe was enough…?

But, here we are, 15-and-a-half months later, and on Friday 22nd November 2024, we will FINALLY travel to our new town to sign the deed and receive the keys! That is less than two weeks from now, and we’re now finally in actual planning mode. It also means, that the blog will finally pick up from now on to share our progress, starting of course with the planning for another house move.

So, what did we end up buying?

The reason we have endured this entire torture journey was because we honestly feel we have found the house of our dreams.

It is set in a plot of land of 17.000 square metres, half of it being pine trees, and the other land with mature olive and fruit trees, land for vegetable beds, and hopefully some wonderful outside living areas as well over time.

The plot has a lot of water coming in directly from the mountains that we can use for keeping the land watered!

The house looks from this picture like it is in a rather isolated rural location, but despite us having all that space, we can see our neighbours, and it is situated very close (a few minutes by car, 30 minute walk) to a small town that has all sorts of supermarkets, other shops and restaurants, so we can still go out and do things and not be too remote.

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The Main house

The main house was built in 1985, a very good year, if I may say so myself… 😉

It has 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, a large dining/kitchen and living room. These are all on the first floor. They are spacious and have got windows in the right places. Both the living room and kitchen have a wood fire, and the whole first floor has got a central heating system. This heating system currently runs on diesel, but we are looking to replace that with something more sustainable, likely a heat pump.

The ground floor is a completely open space that was used for storage and produce processing, including wine making. There is an Adega hidden at the very end as well! The attic also is one big open space across the whole footprint of the house. For the time being the attic will be home to all our not-needed stuff and guests when they visit.

There is a lot of potential to improve both the ground floor storage and the attic. Priority will of course be our living spaces on the first floor, specifically the kitchen. We hope to be able to salvage the wooden floor in most of the house (bedrooms, living room, halfway), but will be for sure replacing the tiles in the entrance hall and kitchen.

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Main house – Ground floor storage

The ground floor storage will be up pretty soon as well though. Currently it is completely empty, but as you can see it can do with some upgrading…

We’ll be putting in a completely new floor, making it mostly wind and water tight, and a lick of paint and/or practicing with some plastering to make it a modern and bright working space that is easy to (keep) clean.

It will also be our new brewing space for the time being. Behind the small wooden door is the Adega where wine can be stored.

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Outbuildings

The house comes with some amazing outbuildings that, again, come with a lot of potential! After the demolishing of the old house on the north side, there is still about… 50 meters of it left, divided into 4 parts. That’s quite a bit, isn’t it?!

The estate agent sent us this picture the day after the old house was demolished. It is still a shame, but… what is is..!

One very large storage space of around 25/30 meters that would be ideal for a small microbrewery, just saying. On the end closest to the house, there is a 4×6 meter space that we will likely open up and turn into an outdoor kitchen/room with big windows/doors facing south, and then there is a very small and mid-size space left on the other end of the hall that we’ll surely find some exciting plans for. Maybe a crafts/cosy work space/studio where we can also house visiting family and friends? Options! Just behind the outbuildings there’s also an old chicken coop. I have that eyed as a potential mini-library/reading nook as it overlooks the mountains….

Also, we’re very grateful for the sellers emptying everything out. These pictures below are from a visit we did in April 2024. Unfortunately we didn’t take the opportunity to also watch inside, but… the caretaker who showed up there as we were having a peek did insist we’d check out the outbuildings.

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Land & Trees

The land has a lot of mature trees. In the back is a small patch of pine trees up the hill. The land is not really usable, but we’ll be able to use some of the wood for either projects, raised beds, and of course for the wood burners.

The usable land between the house and the road has quite a few olive trees, and on the terraces are various fruit trees. We already have seen figs, cherries and lemons, and are keen to see if there are more. The land has some irrigation canals and two water wells that we know of that will help us keep everything healthy.

On the south side of the house there are two large terraces that are ideal for creating raised beds. We will be focusing on maintaining and pruning what is there an maybe start one or two small beds to get in the groove and see how everything is working. We also do not have the time to do all the DIY and gardening and growing next to two full-time jobs, so we’ll need to be careful not to get in over our heads!

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When will we be moving?

Our rental place contract was one for two years to end on 15th of January 2025. Initially we thought we’d have all the space and time in the world to have some overlap and do a lot of DIY BEFORE moving, but…. that isn’t going to happen. To save money and also a lot of time traveling back and forth (it’s an around 2-hour single trip journey from where we live now) we are just going to move in while we do the work.

There is enough space to move things around, and the home and interior are mostly just dated. This means we’ll be able to work our way through all of that probably quicker while we’re there quite comfortably with heating during the coldest months of the year, and all our tools and stuff there. May I remind you that our current rental place does not have any heating…?

Our plan is to be over before Christmas 2024! That’s 4 weeks from receiving the keys. It’ll be a busy few weekends moving everything across and getting started with the most important projects, but we’ve already done a lot of planning and thinking. Especially as this time we’re going to be moving our own stuff with a rental van and a few trips there and back over the course of those 4 weeks…!

See you soon!

We’re now off to IKEA (Yes, on a Sunday afternoon, yes…) to buy some of the stuff on our list that we want to have when/before we move, and that we can then bring when we hire the van to move our stuff from Espinho to our new home.

Wish us luck, and from now on, we’ll keep you updated on our progress more regularly!