About time we went on a run so headed off before 8am to try
and beat the heat in the sun. We have a lovely little loop route just out of
town that takes about 25min, which I extend by another 6min 22sec (but trying
to reduce this J).
A much more cruisy day today. I had a fine old time
transferring the food from the old kitchen area into our new pantry, trying to
remove as much as possible from the old kitchen into our living room so we can
start sanding the wall, and, with a great deal of difficulty, we manoeuvred our
new dryer into the cupboard beside the pantry. It doesn’t have a power
connection yet but looks very snug in its little corner. It’s a good feeling
getting some of these things into their final resting place. Once we manage to
secure an electrician we will also be able to use our oven and cooktop. We are
still stuck with just using the microwave to cook and heat food at present. We
spent an hour on foot today trying to track down some of the tradesmen who are
supposed to be giving us quotes. One electrician promised to provide the quote
tomorrow and one of the builder’s on Monday. We shall see.
Irrespective of these delays, we are very pleased with how
it is all coming together. We are now essentially living in one room, and are
finding it pretty easy really. The sofa unfolds into the bed and is right
smack-bang in front of the TV on the wall. We watch very little on TV but the
tennis champs are on at Roland Garros in Paris at the moment so we have that on
each day at the moment while we are working. It’s a nice diversion.
We bumped into our real estate agent on the stairs late in
the day. He must have been showing the couple of guys with him through the
apartment that is for sale immediately below us. We have vaguely toyed with the
idea of maybe buying it ourselves to do another round of renovation and then on-selling
it but have agreed we don’t have the energy. It is exactly the same layout as
our apartment.
Work on renovating the large apartment above us has now just
about finished and the stairs and lobby have just received a very welcome
scrub to get rid of all the dust and mess left by the workmen traipsing up
and down.
A drain in the church square was leaking a bit a few days
ago so the workmen arrived in force this morning to sort it out. We now have
the lovely sound of trickling water going between the channels – it is very
refreshing in this heat. There are lots of semi-open channels throughout the
town that have fresh water constantly running along them, providing a nice
added dimension to the place. The water comes from up in the hills.
