Another quiet week in Portugal

Only a short one this week, but some interesting stuff. We spent the weekend with our new friends in Nazerè. We had one night on our own with the pets while they went off to the small village house they are selling near Castelo Branco to do some chores and meet up with some friends there.

While there, we frequented one of the new bars along the beach and met up with some of their friends too. A lovely American lady and a Portuguese couple We all had a good laugh over a few drinks and I am pretty sure our combined weight helped anchor the bar down, as it was a tad breezy!

Annette had constant companions. Either the cats or Cosmo the dog. He really took to her and was always following her.

We got back on the the Monday after the windows had been fitted, so paid a visit to the house. The first thing we found is that we couldn’t access the house any more. With the doors and windows fitted, there were no gapping holes to walk through! So, we drove over to the architects place to get a set of keys. We then spent an afternoon in Porto de Mos’s lovely green park having some cool drinks while waiting to have a spare set of keys cut.

Once we got those, it was off back to the house to quickly check all the spare keys actually worked. They did work first time, so all was good. They weren’t cheap though at 7.50€ each. The next thing we noticed was that the angled top window in the master bedroom had not been fitted. It turns out that there was a mistake by the window supplier, so another unit will need to be made and fit later (not sure how long it will take?). Until then, the gap will be covered with OSB until the replacement arrives. The other windows with doors need to be finished off too with all the handles and mechanisms tested. The Patio doors from the kitchen also need to be properly adjusted to fit correctly, so not quite there on the windows and doors, but the house is secured enough to allow the rest of the build to continue.

There is still a lot to do and we have seen a fair share of delays, but that’s to be expected here in Portugal. We hope to see some significant progress in the next few weeks as the holiday season is just around the corner. But Rui and Sandy our super architects have promised an accelerated push to finish.

Like many new-build projects, the process is fascinating and at the same time it can be frustrating. We are super excited to follow our build closely and share our experiences during the time we are here or have our friends report back when we are away on house-sits. Mainly for us to remember the journey and share those stories with our family and friends, but also for those who are thinking of moving here and going down the new-build route. There are quite a few people who have reached out and asked lots of questions about the timescales and costs, etc. We try to answer them all, but we think it’s definitely worth sharing some expectation awareness, as our experience is so different to previous projects back in the UK. If you are coming from the US, UK, Canada, or even another EU country, then hopefully you might gain some awareness of what to anticipate on a project such as ours. We want to eventually do a timeline from when we started the house project, from when the first plans were submitted, to approval, to getting the build licenses and breaking ground to completion and moving in…

That’s all to come, and we have some other ideas in mind too. But, then life gets in the way… such as, our strimmer engine burned out (another lesson, don’t buy cheap tools here) and the weeds and trees are growing furiously, so we need to dip into our already tight budget and spend more money!

So as the title says it has been a fairly quiet week. Still waiting for something to happen at the house, but we have been house-hunting with our friends uncle and cousin which was fun and probably strengthened our decision to go for a new build. We also popped over to our favourite beaches this weekend, and caught up with some friends and met new ones which we both love.