Slipping out of Summer

Much cooler days and cold nights are upon us….hardly got a chance to moan about the heat and hey, it’s Autumn.
The month started off with me (Fraser) going back to England for a Memorial Service. I also got to meet the latest addition to the family and got to play Granpa for a while.

While I was gone, some of our new lilies put their heads above water and Sylvi took a shot for posterity.   Plus the pumpkins got ready for harvesting.

      


Sylvi got on with organizing the bathroom makeover. This turned into something of an odyssey due to previous structure needing removing and the general unsquareness of anything in this house.
Cris and Scott demolished the old shower stall

Poor old Cris had a real job on his hands, what with the difficulties of the room and the wild excesses of our ideas.  I did a lot of tile cutting to instructions from Cris who was doing the building work and coping with Sylvi’s hopes for the design!

In the middle of all this the tap in the laundry sink sort of collapsed through the board it had been mounted on…So, I’ll replace the tap, no problem, right? Wrong. Ended up redoing the whole area which also gave a lot more free space to the laundry which had always been a bit claustrophobic… shame I haven’t got a ‘before’ shot.

The demolition in the bathroom produced a surprising amount of debris…

But the final result made all the chaos worth it…

The bathroom is still pretty tiny, but it’s cool. The floor of the shower is now grey nonslip tiles…still have grout stains to clean off. A surprising side effect is that the shower is now quiet…nothing for the water to drum on – unless you count my empty head…

James came for a week long break from London

and helped out with some of the work, cutting and stacking firewood, clearing the bathroom debris and field debris, sorting out the open store at the back that he had already sorted out last year…just different shite to move around this time and even did some grouting which he hates doing. So thanks James for the helping hand…and the barbie. We did, however manage to catch a few World Rugby Championship matches….
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Adela came for the weekend, met the dogs… 
 

                              
   

Went wine tasting at the Cabriz Adega in Carregal de Sal, buying shedloads of great wine for them to take home and some for us..(thanks James) and celebrated Adela’s forthcoming birthday in a great restaurant.
Was far too short a visit all round but a great way to end a hard few weeks of graft.