We haven’t made a post since November, but we have been doing things. Just nothing to completion, everything lately has been piecemeal. We had the windows fitted in December – during a week of -8C temperatures which was.. unpleasant. Our electricity bill went up to €800 for December to warm up the frozen house once they’d left. But the windows are great. Triple glazing, much less windy in the house now. I was looking forward to taking pictures to share here but they didn’t have the right panes for the front windows so that’s been left unfinished. I’d rather wait to take photos until we have those in. I built a frame for one of the kitchen windows though. Tim had a specific idea in mind and I think I did ok!

He wanted a slightly used and dented look so I sanded some distress into it. I’m proud of it, especially because you can’t tell how wonky the window was originally. I filled in the wonks beforehand as much as I could with sand, cement, a wire frame, a spirit level and sore knees.

We had a new well dug in November and that was left chugging away for a month, leaving silt that it brought up all over the place. The water runs clear now and this week they connected it to the house!

It’s drinkable but very high in calcium so we will be adding a machine to help that. It’s interesting that the well that’s about 10m away, though shallower hardly has any calcium! I bought the final lot of bottled drinking water this week..that was €13 a week and a ton of plastic we’re happy to not do anymore.