A couple of days feels like a week.

I said to Neil that we should always make sure we have a car full of stuff for the new house each trip. Well, I think we could say we were doing our best. This is us after a trip to Brico Depot - Spain's equivalent of B&Q. We had been to buy the stuff to start doing the bathroom.



Plus a few other bits.

We have mains electric, so we took our spare microwave and toaster so we could make beans on toast and coffee for lunch.

This is our makeshift kitchen.

So, we unpacked the car, sorted everything out and set to work.

This was the bathroom before we started.


I have always fancied a shower with a really large shower head. We had seen these showers which also have a regular sized head on a long flexi-hose which will be ideal for showering Brinkley when he's been rolling in anything smelly he can find.



Pity the water's not connected yet - can't wait to try it.



We have a shower cubicle on order as we need a bi-fold door so can't just buy it off the shelf. If you look at the photo above you can see the toilet is quite close to the shower base (this was all installed before we got the place). Well, imagine having to sit down once we've installed the shower cubicle and - no where for the knees! So, solution - a bi-fold door. Then it will fold out of the way - problem solved!




I have always liked sinks built into cupboards and so we had bought a unit complete with mirror. From the size of the box, there was a lot of bits to put together but that was ok, we were experts at flat pack furniture.



So, imagine our surprise when we opened the box and discovered .....







........... it wasn't flat packed - it was ready assembled! That saved us a few hours work!

This meant Neil could get straight on with the installation.

So, we went from this ..... to this in about 30 minutes, taps connected, sink installed.

Another half an hour, and the mirrored cabinets were in place too.

Looking Good!

So, this seemed a good time to make some lunch (it was about 4.15pm and we hadn't eaten since breakfast) so I put the beans and toast on and suddenly nothing worked. We had no electric. It was as dead as a Dodo.

Neil checked the power to the house and 'nada', absolutely nothing.

Now, we have been looking for the electric meter but not found it yet. Jose had told us it was up at the road, but although we had found the water meter we couldn't find the electricity meter. We have no mobile phone signal at the house so we couldn't phone anyone - so we were a bit stuck.

We had seen someone working in the almond trees next door so I went round to speak to them to see if they could help. Of course, we are in the deep countryside here, they do not speak any English here. I introduced myself, explained what we were doing and asked them if they knew anything about the electric suppy. In amongst a lot of what I didn't understand, I did get that they were only there to harvest the almonds and they had nothing to do with the house and knew nothing about the electric. But, they did say our dogs were very pretty, so that was ok.

As there wasn't much left for us to do today, we tidied up, locked up and left.

Since we've been home I've had an e-mail telling me that the electric meter is in the caseta (small building) under the TV mast (on the next large hill) so we may need to go and explore soon.

In the meantime I have the phone number of the electrician and need to ring him to see whether he can meet us at the house next time we are there.

Over all, we've had a good couple of days. We have been to organise new tyres for the car, had a slow punture, where we'd picked up a nail, repaired, costing a whole €7, got a replacement window slat for the security grill (a whole €2), put a new lock on at the house, fitted most of the bathroom and lost all power.

I can't believe it's only Monday.

Next, we need to get the kitchen units - but a couple of days off - golf, car service, searching for a cooker - no time to rest!

Busy, busy, busy!