Autumn in Pinos

Where has the summer gone? It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since I was putting a note on the blog about the Fiesta and now we’re about to start Autumn!

The fiesta went off with a bang – as is usual here in Spain – loads of fireworks, lots of visitors to the village, music, dancing etc. We had some friends over for a BBQ on the Saturday and later on we all went down to the entrance of the village to watch the spectacular firework display – the best yet! After that we all walked back up to the church square to watch the Banderas and majorettes – a very good evening and great company.

We’ve now finished the new small terrace off from the lounge and the metal stairs are installed and we can now access the top terrace from there. The next job to start once that was done was the refurbishment of the other small terrace at the front of the house which is above the main staircase. We started this in August and had the centre of the house open to the stars for a few weeks whilst we got the new concrete beams up in place. We can now report that it is all finished and watertight again and much better now that the old lightwell has gone and we have new glass blocks in place to give us light. It should be a lot warmer this winter too as the old lightwell used to let loads of cold air into the house.We are just adding the finishing touches to the terrace area with some rendering on the walls and the final top coat and then I can give it a coat of white paint and it’s all done. We’ve fitted a new double glazed glass door leading from the Azotea (3rd floor room) out on to the terrace – it’s a lot better now as the old wooden door wouldn’t close properly and it used to leak water when it rained. We’ve put a temporary tarpaulin cover over the small area between the new refurbished roof terrace and the old roof which needs replacing next year and hopefully this should stop any leaks over the winter.

The weather has definitely broken now and the rains have arrived with a few storms but when the sun comes out it warms up pretty quickly and after a few hours you forget it rained. There have been some pretty fierce storms inland in the Cordoba, Sevilla, Madrid, Valencia areas with a lot of flooding and storm damage but fingers crossed we won’t get hit with the same sort of storm we experienced last year. Thankfully we had another delivery of sand and a skip for all the building rubble delivered before the rains started so that was a stroke of luck and after 2 days of backbreaking work the skip was filled and the sand moved to outside the house.  We’re off to Gran Canaria at the beginning of November for a weeks holiday and really looking forward to it. We have been invited to join our friend and her family at their flat in the south of the island and we are hiring a car so that we can go and explore the interior of the island which is supposed to be very beautiful and green – very different to the coastal resorts. We’ll update you on how we get on.

Well that’s about all for now – hope everyone is well and not working too hard.

Hasta luego