Oh, didn’t I just end the last renovation blog post on a bit of a high. Loving that the undercoating was about to start in the kitchen, meaning we could almost, but not quite, see the finishing line. Well, the undercoating did start, but we fell at the first hurdle… Our house seems to be […]
We think we are now on the final hurdle, kitchen renovation wise. It seems like we’ve been living forever without a decent working kitchen we can call our own – in fact, since we sold our house in West Didsbury, back in January 2017, we’ve been making do in the kitchen area. The one we […]
Of all of the things which confound us in Croatia – and there are many, believe you me – the biggest has to be boundaries. We’ve never really had to think about boundaries before, because when we’ve bought or sold properties previously, the Land Registry has just done its thing. But we’re in Croatia now, […]
To look at our garden now, you’d think we were living on top of a rubbish tip. Which, if I’m honest, we are, as the garden has become the dumping ground for all of the stones and rubble and wood and tiles etc from the ongoing kitchen renovation. It’s actually too awful to even post […]
The Istrian countryside is littered with abandoned houses and buildings. Some are nothing more than barns, which have fallen into disrepair but some are elegant villas, which are, slowly but surely, being taken over by nature. There are many reasons for them being abandoned – but a lot are in the state they are in […]
Although the kitchen is nowhere near finished, the space is definitely beginning to resemble more of a room, as each day goes by. It doesn’t help that people who do building work, or plastering work or electrical work, seem to juggle a number of different jobs every day, out here. We rarely get a full […]
It seems like a few weeks since I wrote about the kitchen renovation – and that’s because it is. Because, unfortunately, nothing majorly monumental has been happening. Not because the builders have walked off the job, or because they are lazy. Far from it. They have kept turning up in the very wintry weather we’ve […]
We are so lucky that we now live so close to some amazing places, and that it is now very easy to hop across the border if we fancy doing something in Italy or Slovenia. So, when we saw that Kraftwerk were playing in Ljubljana, having missed the chance to see them when they played […]
We are very excited that visits out here are being planned already for 2018 by family and friends. If you’d like to come out to Istria, here’s where we are currently: 18th – 22nd April – booked 22nd – 29th May – booked 29th May – 5th June TBC 30th June – 4th July – […]
When we bought the house in Istria, one of the things which sold it to us, was the size of the main bedroom. Compared to other bedrooms we’ve had, this was massive and with a lot of potential. Over the months, we’ve done bits and pieces to try and make it comfortable, as we work […]
Having lived in West Didsbury for a very long time, we certainly appreciate good restaurants. And now, having moved to Istria, and initially being a little concerned that we would have to forgo culinary delights, we are super impressed with what we’re finding on our doorstep. We don’t have the choice we had back in […]
Today has been a beautiful day, weather-wise. Yesterday, we had brilliant blue skies and sunshine all day, but man, was it cold! And, last night, when we returned home from a local restaurant, the inky-black sky was littered with sparkling stars, like we haven’t seen since the heady days of summer. Because we aren’t overlooked […]