The Monster

by Helen Rowe

This is the story of a house, not any old house but our old house. Let’s go back a stage to the year prior to moving to Spain. We decided on South Catalunya but thereafter there was little consensus. Week after week of trips over to this area from the UK and more indecision on each return journey. 
The location had to be right first, this was not as easy as we thought. The more villages we visited the more we disagreed, then the day before our trip north to catch the ferry home we fell into this village in the late afternoon. Tired and despondent we sat outside the café in the square and Peter knew instantly I took a second visit some six month later to be sure. So this was the easy bit we now knew where we were going to live!

Not wanting to rush into something we would regret, we decided that once we brought the “one-way” ticket we would rent and look at property at a more leisurely pace. We moved over in the early spring and took a rent for three month on a little house in the sticks. Not what we wanted but the need for all our worldly procession to join us meant that a house with a garage was more important than home comforts. Now from this base we could start looking for our new home.
This was easier than we thought, and in hindsight we jumped headlong into something we often curse but if honest, we would do it all again. We fell head over heals in love with a “monster”. And within three days of viewing it a second time it was all ours……..

The morning the estate agent’s young women had fought to get the front door open for us to view we had some kind on joint lapse of sanity. This monster of a house had stood empty for 22 years, all the former owners processions were as she left them when she left this world. The beds were still made, though the only occupants in the last two decades had had four legs and fur. The kitchen had the washing up in the sink; the pantry has food in it!

It was a weird sensation to walk around a house that time had stopped still in.

We were later to understand that when the elderly lady of the house died, they took her off to bury her and locked the doors. With the exception of an area of the garage used to store old furniture and any old general household items nothing had changed after her death. A family feud had caused the only daughter not to step into the house after she left home at eighteen. In the intervening years her son had used the house when he was a student, he slept over a few nights. The other occupants were cats, rat and bats.

Fortunately most doors opened inwardly, the day we viewed the house we managed to get onto the first floor terrace by squeezing through a grape vine that had run riot for years. The roses in to the garden below had grown up to meet the vine and formed a canopy above the terrace but the views across the orange groves to the mountains were another clincher for us to buy this monster house.  Over the next months the garden was tamed a square metre a day from the garden door luckily only a small area!
We are now the proud owners of a house that had not changed since the thirties so our plans were to start by getting the plumbing, electrics and basic structure brought up to date. We thought this would be better done whilst we still lived in the rented house. Little did we know……..this was going to take months and the possibility on staying in the house in the sticks was not going to happen. Now I am running ahead of myself.

Getting a good plumber and electrician was easy but find a builder to do the structural work was a problem. It was like holding an audition. The first one wanted to ignore the word construction and demolish this area and that area of the house I showed him the door before he could discuss what a modern house he could build for us!
After many others with no sympathy with an old house, the problem was resolved by bring an old “mason” out of retirement. Jose and Llus the labourer would work together on a weekly basis to construct pillars to add 17 steel beams to allow a new bathroom in the centre of the first floor and do preparation and remedial work for the new electrics and plumbing. This was going to be project managed by the architect. Sounds good? Plans accepted, taxes paid, numerous forms signed, material ordered and the all important start date agreed. What we were later to understand was mañana or pasado mañana and summer fiesta.

Whilst all of the deliberations were going on we had the task of clearing the house in readiness for their arrival. This is a story in itself as we had a time capsule once owned by a horder extraordinaire. Weeks later we found that as the building work started the escape to the little house in the sticks after working all day would not be possible. The rental period would not be extended. So now we moved in.

The routine for the next few months entailed large sheets of plastic as the most important element. When we got out of bed in the morning the roll of plastic was pulled over like another sheet! The same process was used in the make-shift kitchen after breakfast. Our shower was a trickle until the new water supply was in place, so keeping clean was an event on the terrace with buckets of water after the builders had gone home. The laundry was a three bucket affair using a hose on the terrace too.

What I have not told you is that we were only working on the ground and first floor; the other two levels would be left for another time. “The Monster” was a little less than 700m2 so half of it was more than enough for us to live in. It was built in 1858 was used as an olive oil and wine business hence the stables and accommodation at the back of the house. Oh this was a surprise to us as the agents didn’t know it was part of the property it was only title deeds and the architect that gave us this news.

Slowly the twenty-first century arrived in our house after three months of dust, dirt, noise and general chaos we could have a shower, cook a meal, wear clean clothes…….. those very simple things in life!

By the end of that summer the builders left and the Monster could relax and so could we. For years now we are slowly renovating the old features of the house. I wonder if we will live long enough to see the project completed, it not, it does not matter as it is our Monster.

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Posted by editor on 2010-04-04 Filed under April 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry