Rainy Dog Kennel Days, Sparks and Lost Channels

Since our return in January the weather has been as bad here as in the UK and across Europe, rain, wind, rain, sun, more rain, but thankfully our flooding is localised so only the field is under water. Not so just west of us on the coast where record breaking surf was recorded at Nazaré.

Didn't know what to do with myself so I decided to start sanding down the ceiling in the bathroom as the paint job I did was rubbish and was peeling off! So I made a start and it was heavy going and not working well. 

     Fraser had come down with a whopper cold and chesty cough which took most of the month to clear and he is still not right. However he took over and was doing a much better job of removing the paint until the electric sander sticker surfaces decided not to let the sandpaper stick on. Aaaaarrggh! Had to get friend David in the UK to send us some Velcro stuff to fix onto them.

So we took a break leaving half the ceiling stripped. And it still is!

I had a 72 hour weird virus thing that made me extremely bone sore, grumpy, tired and lacking in any kind of motivation to do anything. We both sat looking out at the bloody awful weather and grumbled into our tea or alcohol of choice.

HOWEVER.....we eventually managed to shove our hands up our fundaments and pull ourselves together and started the marathon dog kennel project for Lili's dog shelter in Gouveia. This meant much stripping down of pallets, kindly provided by friend Felipe in December and again in January.

Fraser dismembered and I de-nailed and sanded shedloads of wood panels.
We made a design and went for it! We made two!

 
Once tested and approved by the kids we then set some dates for inviting foolhardy friends to a dog kennel day


 IT WAS A GREAT DAY!

 We had lots of donations of fabrics and stuffings to make interior mattresses for the kennels so the team of Rob, Harry, Fraser, Ness and Steve got down to kennel building.

and Marian and Judy got into making mattresses.

 


I just did a lot of encouraging and trouble shooting, tea, coffee and burger and chips making and taking photos.

By the end of the day we had made three more kennels so now have 5 altogether from here and one that friend Paul made earlier.

Rob took 3 of the kennels to the shelter this week and we hope to take the other three in the week to come. Thank you to everyone who donated materials and continue to support the project. You are all great friends. Will be planning another day in the future when the weather permits and we have had a chance to split up the rest of the pallets.

Watch this space for a second blog about our visit to the Kennels next week.

Scraps in the meantime has gone viral on facebook after having been snapped sitting in the log basket and captioned by Steve in the light of current events

The only other useful thing I managed to do was to FINALLY put a new cover on our old Victorian nursing chair! It only took a day - after 25 years of waiting.

Then at 1.30 this morning, we woke up thinking there was silent lightning flashing through the window only to find it was our electricity line shorting out among the trees behind the house. The tree caught fire briefly (too wet to travel beyond the trunk) before the line was broken. The tree was cut down and the line was replaced this morning, but I need to talk to other neighbours about clearing the trees that are growing by and around the high tension line. Ho Hum! 

 And the final ignominy is that we have lost all our BBC Freeview channels today since they have now changed to another satellite, so farewell to intelligent viewing...Bastards!!!!!!!!!!!!