It’s been a bit of a fraught week, what with the water leak in the main between the meter and my house – which meant that it would fall on me to have the main repaired or replaced, if repair was not possible. Which is what it turned out to be. Well, my house was built in the mid-1980s, by a reputable builder who poured a substantial cement foundation slab on a relatively stable part of the development and refrained from adorning my place with more than a minimum of brick facing on the front. In that respect I have gotten off lucky, in comparison to some of the neighbors with larger houses, farther up the hill. Many of those houses were built on thinner slabs on fill, or part-fill, and have heavy brick facing on at least three sides. So only having a plumbing issue after 30 years of ownership, instead of constant and expensive foundation issues …  piece of cake, in comparison.

I’ve also been fortunate in replacing siding, windows, HVAC, and water heater in the last couple of years, although I am still paying on those projects. About the only really big renovation remaining to do is to put down luxury vinyl flooring and have the kitchen cabinetry upgraded. Still – I’m currently in a more comfortable housing situation than those home renovators which are my favorite YouTube watch … even if my own little patch of paradise is not in a particularly scenic location or has any interesting architectural or historic merit. I’ll count the blessings that are mine!

One man in Portugal is rebuilding his grandparent’s fondly-recalled stone house in the village where he grew up. He is also reclaiming the truck garden and corn field; the view down the valley from his place, towards a range of hills on the eastern horizon is particularly lovely. I don’t care much for the look of his house – just a couple of plain stone-build blocks with a new tile roof – but the location is marvelous. Sometimes, he takes the camera on a jaunt through the narrow stone-walled lanes of the local village, past pergolas swagged with grape vines, ancient stone houses and little gardens which reminds me of some of the little towns we visited in Spain. He goes for the natural sounds in the audio:  of birds, the chimes of the local church sounding the hours, and the distant sound of a tractor turning over furrows in the next field over.

A young English/Venezuelan couple is also renovating an extremely decrepit Portuguese farm; they are much farther along in their project. They installed a shipping container as a tiny residence, while they worked on the much-decayed farm outbuildings. They’re saving the crumbling main house for the last. They’ve just about finished the two ranges of farm outbuildings; most of one and all of the other were in such appalling condition that they knocked one down entirely and rebuilt in concrete block sheathed in reclaimed stone. The other range was partially rebuilt within the shell – the rest serves as a workshop, while they hope that the roof doesn’t fall in entirely. Their brother-in-law is a skilled stonemason, who has done just about all the work in stone, while the husband has taught himself an acceptable level of fine carpentry.

Then there is another young couple – English and Slovenian rebuilding an ancient and scenic stone and wood three story cabin on a sloping hillside in a little village in Slovenia. (I had to look up where Slovenia is; I thought somewhere in Central Europe? Ah; part of what used to be Yugoslavia. The mountainous part, near to the border with Northen Italy, once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Isonzo Front in the First World War.)

That little cabin was in truly parlous condition. After looking at the ‘before’ pictures, I believe that if the second story of wooden logs notched together at the corners hadn’t been of such sturdy timbers the whole thing would have collapsed and slid down the hillside entirely. The bottom level, set into the hillside itself was of limestone slabs mortared together. The mortar in some sections of those walls was so decayed that videos showed them being demolished with bare hands. They ran jacks underneath to support the timber upper walls and completely rebuilt each stone wall in four or five-foot sections – and installed French drains in a gravel bed all along the base of those walls below ground level. Now they are at a point of working on replacing the decayed wood sections and fitting out the interior. Also running in necessary electricity and plumbing – this in a structure for which both were a minor afterthought at least a hundred years or more after original construction. It’s a lovely little building, though. I reckon that it will be at least one more year before it’s structurally sound enough to actually move in and set up housekeeping.

The last cottage under renovation on YouTube is likewise in a scenic location, just as old and only marginally less decayed; an originally thatched Cotswold cottage (with a newer garage/apartment adjoining). This real estate heap is being worked on by a young English couple. They fell in love with the cottage, and bought it, thinking they would live in the apartment over the garage, while they renovated the cottage … except that the picturesque thatched roof was decayed to the point that there were mushrooms growing inside the place, essential beams were rotting away, and the garage annex was not all that much better condition. After much toil by friends and family, they managed to remove all the thatch, replace the roof with stone tiles and build in French drains around the walls to reduce the soggy condition of the place whenever it rains – which it does frequently as this is England. Alas, in the latest installment, while digging in the old building to install a new water main, the husband managed to break a hole in one sewer outfall serving both buildings. It’s a large ceramic pipe; and every attempt to cut it and install a connector and a new stretch of pipe just shattered even more of it. Now he and his very pregnant wife and their crazy spaniel dog have had to move out until it can be repaired …

Yes – looking at all of that – I am counting my housing blessing. All I have from this week is a front garden which looks like a WWI battlefield in miniature, what with all the trenches running through it.