It is time to start looking for furniture!

So, with the structure of the house up and progress now increasing, we thought it was the right time to start looking for furniture. Given that it may take a few months before some of the furniture might be ready, we didn’t want to get caught short if the house was ready and we didn’t have anything to go into it. That comes from experience. We have moved before, and had to wait months before a sofa was ready to be delivered, and we just had cushions from an old sofa on the floor to relax on. We had left the UK during the pandemic and literally sold everything. So we really do need to start from scratch. We must have traveled over 100km going to try out various sofas and beds, and we mean a lot! We sat in what seemed like a hundred sofas and spent what seemed like hours testing mattresses! We looked at bathroom sets, tiles and electrical goods too. It does seem a bit daunting to tell the truth.

We do spend an awful lot of time comparing quality, function, cost etc before committing to anything we buy, so it does take a long time. But, as it’s our forever home, and Rui has designed this lovely layout, we want to have some quality fittings to give it its maximum potential to last.

Part of the sale of our previous home and some savings were ear-marked to furnish the house. That, and a bit of contingency for the build. Even then, we think we may have under estimated our contingency, as we are quite shocked at what the house is going to cost compared to what we sold. Bearing in mind we sold a large five bedroom detached property with super insulation and high quality Finishings and a super efficient weather compensation heating system, our house here will end up being more expensive! We feel we under-estimated the effect on delays and the time it takes to build here in Portugal. Over three years, material prices have risen and spending power has diminished. So be very wary of thinking that it will be easily affordable to build from new here.

Having said that, if you are really careful in your spending and can find the right builders who can give you the right options without compromising on quality you can still get the house of your dreams. We want to show what is possible to do, and get the levels of comfort on a tight budget. We think it might surprise a few people to find you don’t need to Just settle for a traditional Portuguese house if you don’t want to. However, that is just our perspective. If that’s what you are looking for, then there is a huge amount of opportunity do do so. Portuguese houses do have a charm of there own, and we have had to make the decision to do without some of the charm and character of those types of houses to get the function, layout and level of comfort we desired. It is all relative in the end.

So these last two weeks have been a mixed bag, but seemed to primarily taken up with traveling between furniture shops! As we explained above, we didn’t want to fall into the same trap as one of our previous house moves. That is not to say we didn’t do other things. Most importantly was to catch up with our friends that live locally, including some of our Portuguese neighbors. It is one aspect of life here that we so look forward too. Living amongst so many lovely people is just so nice. There is such a sense of community here, it just seems perfect. People are so friendly and inviting and we love it so much. And of course in between all the furniture shopping and visiting friends, we still had Annette’s broken arm and post surgery stuff to deal with. She finally had her staples from the surgery removed. This was done over several days in two sessions, but the process was painless and the health centre staff were lovely and efficient.

We also managed to enjoy our surrounding area, especially as the weather is starting to warm up now. We enjoyed trips to the coast to São Martinho do Porto, and around our various favorite coffee and cake emporiums too! Especially the delicious coffee and sweets at Atelier do Doce!

Also, during this time there was a small amount of progress on the house too. They have started to install all the pipework for the rain harvesting from the roof. This was an architectural design feature that Rui proposed, and we love. All the drains are hidden from view, and are mostly embedded within the walls. And, because they are protected from the exposed environment and elements and wind etc, we are hoping they will be maintenance free (fingers crossed!). Also the stone sils for the doors and windows arrived. This is a new concept for us. In the UK we only ever had wood or UPVC sills and frames etc. But we are trusting these details to our architect.

That leads to the windows and doors themselves. This is one aspect in Portuguese building that we are not quite used to. In the UK, when we ordered windows, we knew when they would be delivered. Here, they won’t commit to a date, so you are left waiting and uncertain as to when they are going to turn up. Very frustrating. However, when ever we go visit the house we try and do a little bit each time. Wayne managed to clear some vegetation under the cantilever and trim the olive tree somewhat, although we need to get some good ladders to do it properly.

So we finally, left for our next sit, which is a return sit for Kathryn and Roman. We now consider them our good friends as we do for all our sits now. And this time we were aiming to spend a few days with Kathryn before she jetted off to see her family which is so nice.

We are away for about three weeks and can’t wait to look after Cassie, Phoenix and Cleo once again ❤️❤️❤️. It will be interesting to see what progress has been done to the house when we get back…

So why not subscribe to this blog, or to our YouTube channel to keep up to date and follow our journey of coping with all the changes we are making to our lives. Although we have plans, we never loose sight of the fact we live for now. Hence our title of Carpe Diem (seize the day for most, but to us it means to pluck the best opportunities day by day).

Thanks for reading our story, if you got this far, well done. We will hopefully see you on the next one 👍