Baby Emma

This is a heart wrenching story about a little girl and her family. This is an small passage from their website.

"Emma Louise Clittie is 2 years old. Emma has been diagnosed with a very rare childhood cancer called NEUROBLASTOMA.
This cancer is so rare, it only affects around 80 children in the UK. Emma's cancer is at stage 4 and is an aggressive form of NEUROBLASTOMA, she has been given a 20% to 30% chance of beating the cancer.
Emma is currently undergoing chemotherapy in Liverpool's Alder Hay Children's Hospital and is on an 18 month action plan.

Neuroblastoma has not been researched much in the UK or Europe so the Doctors in the UK can only do there best with the research they have. Under the current treatment plan that Emma is on, there is a 70% to 80% chance of this NOT working and if the cancer goes and comes back then there is no cure in the UK or Europe for this.
We hope and pray that Emma will be one of these special children and will beat this nasty cancer.

In America, they do a lot more research into Neuroblastoma and they don't see it as none curable if it comes back, they have researched and have different treatments options available, some taking Emma’s chances to 50%.

This Appeal is about raising money to take Emma to America if no other treatment in the UK works. We have said from Day 1 that even if there was a 1% chance of beating this cancer then we will take it and grab if with everything we have. The treatment in America cost around £200,000. This is a lot of money!!!
But if it cures Emma then it's worth every penny!

To raise this much money could take months or even years and if we ever need to send Emma to America we would need the money there and then to go straight away.

IF WE NEVER NEED TO SEND EMMA TO AMERICA FOR THIS TREATMENT THEN THE MONEY WOULD GO TO RESEARCH FOR NEUROBLASTOMA IN THE UK."

If you would like to learn more then please go to Emma's Website.

Baby Emma

We Raised the Roof

I have not been able to make a post since early November, which tells you how busy we have been. Work has continued both inside and outside the cave, and the difference is discernable.

The roof has been raised to form a roof terrace, this was a last minute decision, as previously we were just going to tile the roof with conventional tiles. We looked at the views from the roof and decided that the view would be one of our greatest assests, so it seemed a shame not to grasp this opportunity.

A void was created on the outside edge in order to bring the roof level, and then walls and piers were created to take the wooden vigas. These had to be cleaned and the ends stained to ensure that they would not absorb moisture. Failing to do this would have caused the vigas to swell when they got wet and consequently crack the cement that surrounds the ends.

Piers up the rest of the building was ready for the render, and then later the piers and the upper terrace walls were also rendered.

The stairs are almost complet just requiring the final step at the top and the wall below which will form the hand rail. Then the stairs must be tiled. We will be fitting another door on the lower wall which will afford us a little more in the way of weather protection, and a useful under stair storage area.

The whole building in more or less fully rendered now and will have a full thick coat of monocapa next week.

We have drainage spouts leading from the roof terrace to help drain standing water, and we have to finish weatherproofing the vigas which we hope to get done before the end of the week.

The whole place is now starting to look more complete, and the views from the terrace are stunning. We will be tiling the terrace in the spring and giving the whole place a good coat of paint. We hope to get an area fenced for the animals in the spring too, but as usual there is so much to do and so little time in which to do it.

Work inside has also happened at some pace, with all the rooms apart from the cave lounge being tiled and grouted, all that is left is to finish painting these rooms, and move the bath from the main part of the cave house into the new cave bathroom. This will be a precision operation as one the bath is removed we have to get it installed pretty quickly as it is the only bath we have. Once in place we can use this bathroom whilst we refit the other bathroom.

We hope to finish the painting this week and move into one of the bedrooms, so that we can prepare the bedroom we are currently using, for my daughter who returns to Spain in 6 days.

Our next area of work will be in the pantry bringing new wiring into this area and building some open units for storage. I have already opened out a large cupboard and I have nearly finished the yeso work on the walls and new shelves, which will then leave some painting before it can be used. Pan hanger is up and working but I will leave the pictures for the next post, when I hope to have a little more work completed in that room.

Hope you all had a great Christmas, we enjoyed our first Christmas in our cave house, and the fireplace looked very festive and felt very cosy with the wood burner chucking out oodles of heat. Hope you all have a great New Year.

Online Petition Please Sign

Okay this is a quick entry but a very important one. Please follow this link and read the story, if you feel that you can support us please sign the online petition, it will only take you a minute but would make the world of difference to a lot of people

Sing For Your Supper.... TCR

If you cannot be arsed to read the story and just want to support then just follow this link and sign the petition.

TCR Online Petition

I thank you, TCR thanks you, the young people of Teesdale, Co. Durham , UK thank you XX

UPDATE

I would like to thank all you who took the trouble to sign the online petition, your support was greatly appreciated. Sadly TCR lost the vote and will now have to go back to the drawing board. I will post again when I have more news. If you would like to read the full story from the local paper please follow this link TCR Story

Raising The Roof

We are finally raising the roof of the extension. The picture below shows the leve it was at. That is my sister and brother in law checking out my motorbike....lol






As you can see the level of the roof has been raised with the intention of putting an additional terrace on the roof. We had elected to have a pitched roof but after much deliberation we have decided to opt for the extra terrace.




At the weekend the builders will be back, weather permitting to carry on with the job. Photos are more for OH's benefit as he is currently in the UK leaving me to oversee the work..........I mean what was he thinking ........

Sitting Room Completed

One room down and this is the next one on the list, the sitting room. This is next to the Television room and we plan for this to be just an area to sit in and chat away from the television. This room was not in a bad state of repair or decoration, but as is typical the electrics needed a vast amount of sorting out to make it not only practical but also safe.

The channels for the new electrics had been dug some time earlier, but time constraints and other more important projects had to be done before we could consider making a start on this room.

There was already a light and two sockets but they were not the best. Whilst the ceiling light had 3 lights it was at best candle power, and the electrical circuits had a happy knack of just switching off if you plugged too much into them. We also had to route the cable for the sky in through this room, so there were quite a few channels to fill and a lot of wires to fill the channels.

Filling the channels was not too much of a problem, as they already had yeso rapido holding the conduit in place, so any remaining gaps were filled with another mixture of rapido and then contralado and the finishing plaster to give as smooth a finish as was possible.

A good deal of sanding down and it was starting to look the business. Word of advice, even if it sounds like common sense, to most. Always wear a mask as the dust created was something else and got everywhere.

One of the last jobs before painting was to remove the old light switches, plug sockets and light fittings. This bit was hilarious to say the least. For the first time in my life I saw how they attached the ceiling light and I was gob smacked. One thing for sure it would have never fallen down.

I mean that has to be at least an 8" nail, which had to be removed with a crowbar. Now I understand that light fittings must be secure but there is overdoing it a bit and this was a perfect example.

Not content with using nails to secure the light fitting the plug sockets were also secured in the same way, albeit not with such sturdy nails, I can only imagine that they must have run out of the big long ones and had to use smaller ones for this plug socket.

We realised when removing the cabling for this socket that it has been working on the equivalent of bell wire or speaker wire, just really glad we did not use any of the sockets

Two good coats of pain were applied and here we are the done job, well almost we have to build a proper base for the fire and the grate to finish the job, but that is not rocket science.

We are currently using this area as a temporary office until we have the office premises open in Cullar, which should not be too many more weeks now.

As you can see the improvement in the lighting quality and the benefit of some furniture has made a vast difference to this room.

Next up.......Nope not the pan hanger as I have a set back with that....lol Next up Work on the roof starts......whoo hoo!

Another Room Completed

We have managed to finish another room in the cave, and this was a very important room, Mum's TV room. Up until now Mum has been camping out in what will be the sitting room, where the channels for the new electrics had been dug out quite some time ago. There were cables and extension leads running across the floor and because we have both the back door and the front door open most of the time, a hefty draught could sear through. The lighting was also ancient so rather that a good light you had, at best, two candle power. Plus due to the accoustics in this room the sound from Mum's TV could be heard throughout Pulpite and I suspect into parts of Cullar too. So it was time for action. The picture below shows the room as we bought it. The wiring was stapled across the wall and then down to a lazy switch for the solitary light. There were no other lights or sockets.

Junction boxes, light fittings, light switches, double sockets were all dug into the rock and the cables ran through conduit which was then hastily held in place with yeso rapido and then when that had set yeso contralado. A little tip here to anyone who is undertaking this sort of work. If your walls are reasonably flat, like these were, if you run a damp sponge over the contralado you can, with some practise get the wall pretty smooth. We also had to run the cables for the sky into this room which is 3 deep into the cave, and from this room we also ran the sky cables into Mum's bedroom which is next door to her tv lounge, just in case she is feeling unwell one day and would like to be able to watch her sky in bed. We like to make sure that Mum is well looked after and has all the creature comforts that we can provide for her. She is well into her 80's, and is a lovely person who has looked after her family very well all her life, the very least we can do for her.

Once everything was in place we left it to dry out, which did not take long, then we gave the whole room a good sand down, ready to paint. We managed to get the filling of the channels and the sanding and painting done in a day. A good clean round and Mum's furniture in. Not an easy job but we did not want her to be without her TV for too long.

Pleased to say she is delighted with the results, and I managed to get some of her beloved family picture put onto the walls today so she is really, really happy. The uplighter in the corner of the picture below is stunning, it has a very bright light at the top which can be controlled by a dimmer switch on the cable and it also has a flexible reading light. Found this in Carrefour in Granada and a bargain at €24.90. I am going back for one for my lounge

Sorry about the photos I am having a mare of a day with blogger and that is no fun with a migraine .....sob!

Next up I hope will either be pan hanging.....(yeah I know that should have been next but there is a story with that one) Or it will be the sitting lounge as we are busy with that now.

Three Posts in One

In Search of Narnia

Cave houses often throw up the odd surprise now and then, especially if they are quite old, and have not been fully reformed; our cave house is no exception. Early in our renovation scheme, when we were digging the channels for the new electrics we found two alcoves in two different rooms. I had hoped that we might find more rooms; I guess that is the kid in me. However the two alcoves that we found were of reasonable size so we opened them up, and cleared out the rubble that lay behind them. I have been told that it was common practise to close up rooms that were no longer needed and therefore not used. I can imagine that once the family had flown the nest, the parents would have had no need for the extra rooms, and from a practical point of view, it would have cut down on the cleaning.

The alcove that we found in the room which is going to become our bar, will house the cooler for the beer pumps, and a fridge for ice and mixers, not forgetting the lovely terracotta beakers that I have found. Placed in the ice box they are nice for beer and cold drinks, and seem to have the ability to keep drinks far cooler than glasses, which have been placed in the ice box.

The alcove that we opened up in my mother’s room is a useful addition to he walk in wardrobe, which we have now finished, although I was gutted when the alcove did not in fact go to Narnia. I have rummaged around behind the clothes hanging in the wardrobe to no avail. We have decided not to tile the floor and mother asked that we paint it green, like grass. We were originally going to put a curtain across the doorway to the wardrobe, but mother decided that a roller plain blind would be nice. She has a light coloured roller blind in place, and she intends to cut out four window sections and stitch in clear vinyl so that it looks like a window and hang drapes at either side. I think she misses a window in her room, not one to look out of just to look at.

A Terrace to Die For

The terrace had become a bit of a bone of contention for us, and we envisaged that it was going to take far more work than we had expected. The main problem being that it was now on more than one level, partly because of the building work that had taken place and partly because we changed our mind about the tiles. The original tiles, although lovely were just not man enough for the job, and we really should have seen this from the start, however these are the mistakes that we were supposed to make in order for us to become wiser !

Our young group of musicians actually helped to lay the first section, albeit not dead flat, but hey this is rustic. ‘Im indoors’ has battled on with the rest of the terrace and the little problems that it has thrown up, and I have to announce it is nearly finished……whoo hoo. We just have the edge tiles to lay, which should be happening this evening when it is cooler, they are all cut an ready to go in place.

I am quite impressed with my other half, as he has shown a certain level of determination with the terrace project, staying out in all sorts of weather to complete a row. However the effects on his body have been grave. Scuffed knees that would make coarse grade sandpaper look smooth, fat fingers and fat toes where they have been hit by mallets and paving slabs, premature grey hair which was the combination of dust from the grinder and stress, and last but not least, the inability to stand upright due to tilers back syndrome.

This is most certainly going to be ‘A Terrace to Die For’……almost

Going on the Rails

Kitchens can never be too big and can never have too much storage areas. My kitchen was designed to be big, and the heart of the home. It is big and airy and just has base units. I did not want wall mounted units, firstly I am somewhat vertically challenged, so reaching wall cupboards, has always been the bane of my existence. Wall cupboards always collect dust and grime on the top which constantly has to be cleaned, again for some of my stature this is not desirable. I do have lots of base units, 6 doubles, 1 single and two drawer units, but I also have a lot of kitchen bits and bobs. I have a lot of hanging things, like kitchen implements and it is always a pain having to trot back and forth to find things when in the middle of some culinary masterpiece.

I decided that rails with s shaped hooks would be perfect, allowing me to hang my precious bits and bobs where I needed them and could reach them. I found a rack unit in Lidl which was reasonably priced, this had two rails and stainless steel racks for kitchen roll, cooking foil, coffee filters and another random shelf. Sadly I managed to pick the only rack set that did not have the rail mountings or the hooks, and I frankly could not be arsed to drive for 2 hours to exchange it. Looking around the local furry terrier I found brackets to mount the rails, more rails, and the s shaped hooks. In all now I have 6 rails in various locations in my kitchen. All of my kitchen tools are right at hand and my little coffee cups are displayed above my coffee machine. So I am now a happy little bunny, and nothing is going off the rails, most definitely going on the rails !

Next Up.....The finished terrace, Maybe a roof!! And Pan Hanging........