| |
Our
adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....
  
Well Darryl and the guys from Australian Construction came up trumps. They promised us the keys for 1st November and that is exactly what we got. There are one or two things to clear up, which more of later, but we have to say that they kept their promise. When we got to Lapta in the morning, Darryl and a little swarm of his workers, where doing last minute things, but basically, we are all together and I have to say the house is looking superb. The next big thing will be the arrival of the furniture. At 7.30 in the evening, two customs officers arrived, suitably wined and dined by the freight forwarders, together with the 40 foot container and a team of 8 to off load. From here on in a moderate amount of chaos ensued. Joan was directing packages, according to the brief description on the documents, I was upstairs trying to make sure everything got placed in the right rooms and that all the big pieces were unpacked. Most of the reasonable sized cartons ended up in the downstairs rooms for Joan and I to attend to over the next week, but at least unpacking some of the items meant that a lot of the packaging went back in the container. Drinks, crisps, cookies and a couple of whiskies for the officials seemed to work wonders. Finally by just after midnight, Joan and I went back to our rented house and sank gratefully into bed. Maybe we had a little drinkie to celebrate but my memory doesn't go back 15 days.At the end of all this exercise it looks as if only 4 items were damaged. A chest of draws from the spare bedroom, repairable here by the cabinet maker. The cast iron leg of a garden table was snapped, this probably can't be repaired but, a wrought iron base could be made to take the existing top. A glass vase and a china ornament were broken beyond any possible repair. So now we await the insurers decision. I suppose at the end of the day, if you consider that all this stuff was packed some 5 months ago and has been handled many times, then not a bad result.
It will come as no surprise if I tell you that we were up and about fairly early today. We arrived to a great welcome from our neighbours, banners and balloons on the balcony. I think really they were celebrating the fact that the dust and the noise of a building site was almost at an end. It was a wonderful feeling to be standing in our own house, having watched most of the building work; and realising that the dream had really come true.We made the basic decision to try to approach the carton unpacking reasonably logically and to go back to the rented pad to sleep for the next couple of nights. That way we could eat in restaurants on our way back and not worry if we left a little chaos in the new house. Then Lil came up real trumps on our first day, she announced that she had made this huge lasagna and asked if we would come to help them eat it. No contest.
After 3 days of unpacking carton after carton, making decisions about what should go where, we had finally stocked up with food, made the bed and stayed for the first night in our new home. Heaven! A big juicy steak, a bottle of wine and a few malt whiskies later, we slept in our own bed for the first time in five months.Whilst we had been busy each day, Cyprus Pools had also been busy, the terrace work around the pool had not been completed and we had agreed that 5th November was a reasonable end date. Today, the 4th, they will still pouring grout around the tiles, so there is no way they are going to finish. The grouting process is quite different, they make a very wet cement solution and pour out of a watering can and then hand finish, I suppose that it is very effective but very primitive also.There have been a few minor teething problems and I suppose that's only reasonable. When the problem needed addressing quickly, like the leak from the water tank valve, then these have been dealt with promptly. The connection of the electric to our house seems to be something else. The technician from the Electric Authority has inspected and passed the work, but getting us connected is another problem. At the moment we get our electric from next door via a cable over the ground.Providing we don't have the water heater, the cooker etc. all running at the same time, everything works o.k.. The major advantage is that the builder is paying the electricity bill at this time, so lets not rush with the connection right now.
Nothing really exciting, just carton after carton to be unpacked. We are however building a mountain of cartons and paper, which the freight company have promised to collect, it's just the fact that they didn't actually say when, that bothers me a little. Everything is beginning to look really shipshape by now. We can't wait to get the garden in some sort of shape just to finish things off.Work around the pool terrace seems to be almost finished, today they started site clearing. It will be nice not to have to look at the piles of gravel, cement and builders rubbish, also the ramp which leads from the farmers field to our site will be dug out and then we can see just how much garden we have left.We are told that weeds grow in abundance here and very quickly, so the current planning is to use plastic membrane and gravel chippings to cover most of the remaining garden area. Bri and Lil have tried the grass covering method and came to the conclusion that it was a lot of effort requiring constant summer watering, hence they can be seen working up a sweat with a few loads of gravel.
Most mornings when we awaken we find ourselves, despite the fact that it is mid November, outside on the breakfast terrace with temperatures already of 24/25 degrees by 8.30 am.Today things were a little different. On Saturday, two lorry loads of top soil had been delivered and today two guys turned up to spread it all over the garden. At 9.30 the rain started with a vengeance, the guys were collected by the builder and no doubt will return at some future date, when things have dried out, but now what we have is a mud mountain in the back garden. He Ho things don't always go to plan.We went this morning to our old rented villa, cleaned up everything, made sure nothing had been left and then handed the keys back to the agent. Not really something of major significance, except that we have now lost our phone line. This means that all the website work and the e-mail replies, has to be done off line and then I need to trot off to the Internet Cafe. Fortunately Brian has been doing this for the last year and will introduce me to a Cafe were they allow laptops to be taken.
They came today to install our new TV, Digital box and Satellite dish, this will be the first tele. we have seen in 5 months. The company doing the work recommended a satellite named "Hotbird", so Joan and I paged through 196 channels in the evening with great excitement, what did we find, three English speaking channels a couple of movie channels that required no language at all and a shopping channel in American hard sell. Tomorrow they are coming back to aim the thing at a more appropriate satellite.
As we were now half way through the month and the web was very much out of date I had promised myself a time to bring everything up to date. So here goes, for those interested, a few photos of the almost completed job.The rear steps and upper terrace leading off the pool area, the front entrance with the superb walling and gates which Darryl had organized; and on the inside views of the lounge, front and back. Finally the important room in the house, for those who enjoy their food, the kitchen. Double aspect windows, lots of cupboard space and all the appliances suitably installed. The observant among you will have noticed that there are some light fittings missing and no curtains as yet. The electrician will be back to install our lights, after control has taken place and we are connected up to the mains, the curtains were ordered this morning. Full length, heavy weight curtains for the two lounge windows and the dining room will be made and hung by next Wednesday at a cost of £92.00. We very nearly bought some new curtains for our bedroom in U.K. and brought them with us, they where to have cost for the one room alone, £196.00. Are we now glad we took advice.
The weekend was spent starting to organise my own workspace. I had ordered some timber from the builders merchant, known here as the Yapi Market, so now it was down to building a work bench and some shelf space for tools etc. Luckily I had brought lots of stuff from the U.K. with us because as sure as hell, I'm going to miss B & Q.A mini miracle occurred today, the Electricity Board man turned up, unannounced of course, and connected us to the mains supply. Joan celebrated by announcing she was going to bake a cake, next question, what's the Turkish for self raising flour.The mud mountain has been spread all over the garden as topsoil, so today we got a landscape gardener in to give us some ideas and prices for initial planting. He suggested our own lemon tree, good for the G & T, our own orange trees, so we can have fresh juice in the mornings and an olive tree. Here you collect your own olives, take them down to the olive factory with a few empty bottles and for a moderate sum they convert the olives into virgin oil. Joan wants a banana plant, or is it a tree, something to go with the lumpy custard I suppose. Everybody tells us that the things that grows best here are weeds, so we will go with the general suggestion of membrane and gravel on top, to cover most of the garden area. What you then do, is cut through and plant under the membrane. There is one major snag to this idea, the gardener reckons we need 7 lorry loads of gravel. So it will be, down to tin pan alley looking for some cheap labour for a few days.
The lounge and dining room curtains came today, they look great and really finish the rooms off. Also the forestry guy turned up with an old Bedford truck and 2 tons of logs. Guess what, dumped on the driveway in a great heap, so that's tomorrow's little job.
The logs are all stacked, in a very useful alcove under the stairs to the rear terrace, so we are all set for when the temperature drops, a nice cosy log fire and a bottle of something red with the cork withdrawn, sounds good to me.
David Rogers, from Kenya, is over at the moment, supervising his house build up the mountain in Karaman. We have been sending photos of the progress to him and his wife on a regular basis, since work started in July, as it helps them to keep an eye on things. David brought a bottle of malt as a thank you and took us out to dinner tonight. You can come again anytime David! We also agreed to meet up on his site, Sunday morning, to take some photos, that I could send over to Glen in Kenya. That way she will also feel that she is being kept up to date. So if anyone feels like building a house on the side of a mountain this is what the base foundations could look like.
Joan and I have been struggling to find material for the bedroom curtains, lots of floral designs etc but not what we wanted. This house is much more modern and light than anything we have had before, so we wanted to keep it simple and all three bedrooms the same. We had exhausted the curtain shops in Kyrenia, so today it was off to Nicosia. We had started to give up hope there as well, until Joan remembered that there was a big material stall/shop in the indoor market area. There we found just what we wanted, there are four windows in total, each 2.20 meters wide and 2 meters drop. A nice heavy weight material made to measure, just ready to hang for £152.00 in total. The price was nice, but when I asked how long before they were ready, the guy said come and pick them up tomorrow lunchtime. This is Cyprus and every day things like that serve to remind you what an amazing island it is.
The last couple of days things have changed. Since we arrived here on the island, July 16th, we have got accustomed to eating breakfast outside, but these last couple of days the weather has changed. It is still 18 - 20 degrees in the morning but it has been overcast and quite windy. Maybe this is the prelude to winter, we will see.
Yesterday, we were expecting the television engineers to try to sort out the positioning of our satellite dish and our program cards. When it got around to 6.30 pm I telephoned them and was expecting an excuse, but no, they were on the way. Finally at 7.30 pm they turned up and continued to work until past 10 pm to sort us out. This is Cyprus, this is the norm and the two guys were just happy that we were happy, it sure takes some getting used to.
This afternoon, after the usual Friday shopping trip, Joan and I took a walk down to Lapta beach, the sun had come out, although it for sure was not the blue skies of summer, but it was really pleasant and one hardy soul was out there swimming.
We can hardly believe that Xmas is approaching fast so this evening we will be having a panic with all the cards that need to go off to the U.K. and Holland. It is going to be really strange, already we notice the complete lack of the Xmas build up in the shops. One or two of the small shops, who cater for European residents, have bought in some larger boxes of chocolates and we even saw about 20 Xmas puddings on the shelf.
|
|
