Category Archives: DIY & Maintenance

Fancy a Flavour of the Finca Life?

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Filed under Countryside, DIY & Maintenance, Garden and gardening

In a week’s time my blog ‘Living in Rural Mallorca’ will be on year old, and this is my 91st post. However, I have no grounds to boast, because it’s been a few weeks since I last posted anything, and a few followers have even been in touch with me to see if I still reside on Planet Earth – let alone in our finca.

Here are excuses I could have used:

  • We won the Euromillions lottery and are now living on our own private island.
  • The dog ate my computer (well, that one has been known to be used where missing homework is concerned, but fails here because we don’t have a dog – and they may eat paper, but probably not plastic and metal).
  • The BBC decided to make a documentary about our life as expats in rural Mallorca and we’ve been up to our ears in Pan Stick, clapper boards, and Angela Rippon.

However, none of these is true, so here’s the reality: we’ve been busy.

Springing into Action

May is the month when we prepare our outdoor spaces for summer: dragging the outdoor furniture from its winter storage, doing any necessary repairs, cleaning the terracotta-tiled terraces, and that most time-consuming of tasks . . . weeding. Into the mix this year we also added some external wall-painting and interior ceiling-painting. And, in case we weren’t quite busy enough, I found myself writing a large amount of copy for the magazine for which I work as a freelance writer.

May is also the month when my father and his younger brother (my Uncle Ray) always come to stay for their spring holiday. This year we had an added treat: my brother, his wife, my three nieces and two boyfriends (my nieces’, not my brother’s!) decided to holiday here at the same time. Our little finca certainly couldn’t accommodate everyone, so brother rented a nearby finca for his family and we all got together, here and there, to enjoy ourselves over the course of a ten-day period. Blog? At midnight, I was just too tired to fire up the computer.

A Romantic Taste of Rural Mallorcan Life

A finca life can involve a lot of work – as you’ve probably gathered if you’ve read some of my previous 90 posts – but it also offers the chance to escape the stresses of daily urban living. If you’d like a taste of this Mallorcan rural life – without the maintenance and financial upkeep – check out the lovely place my brother and his wife rented for their holiday, by Googling ‘Ses Pedres, Manacor’ (or check it out on TripAdvisor).

Ses Pedres

Ses Pedres

Apart from being in a lovely rural location (yet still very convenient for Manacor and the beaches of the east coast), the owners were charming – supplying fresh eggs from their chickens, citrus fruits from the land, and even a home-made sobrasada (the Mallorcan cured pork delicacy – presumably made from a previous finca resident). And to add to the enjoyment, the extensive land around the finca was home to chickens, a young Mallorcan black pig and a Menorcan breed of horse.

Could be tempted to book a holiday there ourselves – if only we had the time …

Jan Edwards Copyright2013 

A Cautionary Watery Tale – Part Two

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Filed under Building works, DIY & Maintenance, Tools and machines, Utilities

When I look back at the various problems – OK, let’s call them challenges – that we’ve had living in our finca in rural Mallorca, most of them have been water-related. And several of them have arisen as a result of a job that we did in the belief we were making an improvement.

The installation of an electric water pump, to speed up the flow of water in the house, is a prime example: after having the pump fitted, The Boss was left with the task of digging a trench across the drive, in which to bury the electricity cable.  But when all was dug and buried, that wasn’t the end of it  . . .

Pump Up the Volume

With the new pump working, we knew we’d use more water and electricity, but were alarmed to discover how much more. Our water consumption had more than doubled and we’d been using enough electricity to power a small pueblo. It looked as though we’d have to avoid turning the taps on fully . . . which would rather defeat the object of having the pump.

Getting through the butano at a rapid rate

Getting through the butano at a rapid rate

To add to our woes, the water heater supplying our shower room had developed an insatiable appetite for butano.  Fearing a gas leak, we called back Pep the plumber, who quickly applied his analytical brain to the problem. Within minutes he’d dismissed our leak theory and suspected something far more serious. Muttering in mallorquin, he went out to his van – returning with a pickaxe.

Swing That Thing

The bad news, Pep explained, was that our hot water pipe was probably leaking, which would cause the water heater to use more gas. The even worse news was that the leaking pipe was likely to be under the floor tiles in our shower room – hence the pickaxe.

We couldn’t bear to watch Pep smash up our terracotta floor, so retreated – only to rush back at what sounded like a very loud mallorquin expletive. Kneeling amid shards of terracotta and an indoor fountain we hadn’t had before, was a very wet Pep. Swinging his pickaxe, he’d accidentally punctured the cold water pipe.

But he’d also found the hot water pipe, which was seriously leaking – explaining the increase in our water and power consumption. It seemed that the increased water pressure had ruptured a weak joint in the old pipe. Pep set to and eventually fixed both pipes.

Of course, there was still that large hole in the floor. And, as we had feared when we saw it, repairing that was another ‘consequence job’ for us.

Jan Edwards Copyright2013 

Brushing Up on DIY Skills

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Filed under DIY & Maintenance

Painting persianas – the world’s most boring job?

I was concentrating so hard on my mission to remove seven years’ worth of built-up cal from a loo we’d never actually used (Mallorcan water is notoriously hard), that I didn’t hear The Boss come into The Den’s tiny shower room behind me.

“Er . . . I thought we were supposed to be painting the persianas?” He stood with his hands on his hips, wearing a quizzical frown – and a fine head-to-toe veil of dust, resulting from his labours with the electric sander and our exterior shutters.

Dividing the chores

When it comes to decorating, The Boss is head of sanding (the dust makes me sneeze and, besides, he’d never let me play with – sorry, use – the electric sander.  I’m the ‘lucky’ person who gets to wield the brush with bristle alopecia, and the treacle-like Spanish gloss paint.

Well, I’d finished painting the back door shutters and had been waiting for him to finish sanding the next set. With my brush sitting in a jar of white spirit, I’d decided to fill the time usefully and make some progress in the annexe we were trying to turn back into the third en suite bedroom it had been for the previous owners.

A word of warning if you’re thinking of living in an old finca: every job completed results in a new one (or more) for the everlasting To Do list. Not only did we discover that the door into the shower room was peppered with woodworm holes, but, on first flush of the newly gleaming loo, we also realised there was a problem with some of the twiddly bits in the cistern, and the water wouldn’t stop running. Twiddly bits were removed and the loo was once again out of commission for the foreseeable future.

A pair of newly-sanded shutters, moulting brush and can of gloopy gloss beckoned; plumbing and woodworm problems would have to wait.

A slightly different version of the above was posted on my previous blog.

Jan Edwards ©2009

DIY Can Be Dangerous . . . and Messy

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Filed under DIY & Maintenance

When a listener to my old BBC radio programme sent me a ‘Bob the Builder’ doll as a farewell gift, I realised I might have inadvertently given the impression that I’d personally be restoring an old finca, stone-by-stone, when we moved to Mallorca.  In fact, all we planned to do was convert what had been someone’s quaintly-appointed holiday property into a comfortable permanent home.  Hardly a major project – or so we thought.

Lessons

Lesson number one in doing up an old house on Mallorca is that the work never actually ends.  Number two is that it will always cost you more than you budgeted.

I’m a creative, rather than practical type. This is a girl who – when hanging a picture – always used the heel of her shoe to bang in the nail, so realistically, I wasn’t going to be plumbing in a new kitchen or assembling the odd door frame.

Wielding a paintbrush though is something I’ll modestly admit to doing quite well. I also find it relaxing, so The Boss was more than happy for me to tackle the varnishing job on the new wooden bedroom door that we – or more accurately, a carpenter – had installed.

Perched on a stepladder, brush and a tin of varnish in hand, I was beginning to feel I was finally earning that ‘Bob the Builder’ doll. Until the moment I discovered that flip-flops weren’t really appropriate footwear for the job. Climbing down the ladder, a flip – or was it a flop? – caught on the edge of a step, and I crashed back onto the floor, splattering streaks of Honeyed Pine all around the room and over me.

Undeterred, I did eventually finish the job. Some day soon, I’ll get out the Brillo and tackle those varnish stains on the floor tiles.

©Jan Edwards