Yesterday was Good Friday and, for the first time in 28 years, I wasn’t officiating at a Church service. So as it was a fine, sunny Spring day, around midday, I set out walking the yellow waymarked route to Srbská Kamenice. This is a walk that I described and illustrated in a previous blog post last August, which you can find here.
This past winter, we’ve had two serious storms which have brought down many trees. The first was Storm Herwart at the end of October 2017. The second was in mid-January 2018. I’m sure the authorities will eventually clear all the paths but they face a massive task.
After reaching Pod Strážištem, at 396m, the highest point on my route, I successfully negotiated the steep decent down to Srbská Kamenice, aided by my trekking pole. As I entered the village, I caught this lovely view ofKostel sv Václava ahead of me.
Whilst I was there, Ve starém kráme became very busy with visiting Germans, many of whom like me, had been out walking and now wanted a late afternoon meal. I felt quite proud of myself being the only person in the whole room speaking in Czech with the waitress. She very much appreciated me doing so, wishing me a ‘Hezký víkend!’ with a broad smile, as I left. I did respond, ‘Vam také!’
Suitably refreshed, I then headed off on the shorter green route, back to Stará Oleška. The total round trip is about 11-12 kilometres which I can normally walk without any problem. But at the end of the day, my body was busy reminding me that I hadn’t done a walk of that length for a few months!
My apologies once again, for another long pause between blog posts. I was planning to write something back on Tuesday 6th March, only for my laptop to crash whilst downloading a Windows 10 update 🙁 Two days later, I travelled to Berlin for a meeting of the Council of Anglican & Episcopal Churches in Germany (CAECG). Twenty-four hours into the meeting, I went down with a very nasty bout of vomiting and diarrhoea from which it took me a week to recover.
But enough of my ills – this is a short update of further progress with the house.
Having had the previous shower room completely gutted, I had to choose new fitments and then have one of the workmen return to fix them. These included this mirror cupboard above the washbasin, together with towel hooks, a glass holder, and a shelf in the shower for shampoo and shower gel. I also had to have a new shower curtain rod, as the re-built shower room is slightly wider than its predecessor, and the old rod therefore didn’t fit!
This photograph was taken after Sunday 18th February, as that is when the electrician returned to fit the new light I had purchased, above the mirror cupboard. Before that, all I had was a light bulb on the end of a piece of electric wire, sticking out of the wall!
However, as well as fitting the new light, the electrician came with a printed A4 sheet of paper which listed by number, each of the circuit breakers/trip switches that he had fitted, saying in both Czech and English, what part of the electrics each related to. This is another example of how Elefant and their staff have gone out of their way to be helpful to me, the English-speaking foreigner. They will be getting more of my business 🙂
Finally, on Thursday 22nd February, three men arrived to fit a new folding door, between the kitchen and the shower room. The reason for the delay in fitting it was because it was coming from Italy and the supplier took over two weeks to deliver it to Elefant.
It was only after this folding door was fitted, that Ondrej at Elefant finally sent me an invoice. Although the original agreement mentioned making staged payments during construction, these were never asked for. And when I asked about receiving an invoice, after the bulk of the work was completed, the answer was that they would not issue one, until the shower room door was fitted.
Until the kitchen was refurbished, the bulk of my crockery, glassware, etc, was stored in these packing boxes, in the room directly behind the kitchen, getting covered in dust! It has been a joy to slowly unpack these boxes, rediscovering what I possess and deciding where everything is to be stored. Before any item has gone in a cupboard, it has first been put through the dishwasher!
This room is now clear. My plan is to decorate it to get rid of all the orange 😉 and then get Elefant to fit further matching units along the wall on the right, to store all those things that didn’t fit in the kitchen. I’ve asked for an appointment with Ondrej at the Elefant showrooms, for later this week.
My sincere apologies for the for the absence of any new posts here since very early January. The main reason is in the title of this one. On Monday 8th January, I began a period of just over three weeks, living in the middle of a building site.
When I purchased my new home in Stará Oleška, I knew I would need to have the kitchen completely refurbished. As you can see in this photograph, taken after the previous owners had moved out but before we moved in, the only fittings were a sink, one floor unit, three small wall units, together with a wood-burning stove.
When I first viewed the house back in March 2017, there was still snow lying in the back garden, so having the wood-burning stove roaring both for heating and cooking, made perfect sense. But I knew that in summer, I wouldn’t want to have it going in order just to cook, when the temperature outside would at times be in excess of 30°C.
Therefore in advance of moving in, I purchased a simple electrical unit with two hot plates, that plugged into one of the wall sockets. This was my only means of cooking over the summer months, hence many regular visits to nearby Restaurace U Soni 🙂 But in September, I set about finding a firm who would completely refurbish the kitchen, including installing an electric cooking hob and oven.
I was recommended, once more by my real estate agent Martin Tonder, to a firm in Decín with the delightful name of Elefant. Fortunately, Martin and Ondrej, the two sons of the owner Mr Bulva, both work for their father’s business and both have reasonable English. After discussing plans and choosing kitchen units with Ondrej, it was agreed that a house visit was needed, to see if what I had in mind was feasible.
On the afternoon of Tuesday 24th October, Martin and Ondrej, along with their father, ‘the boss’, came to visit the house. The boss confirmed what we had previously agreed, that they would have to build a low heatproof wall, either side of the wood-burning stove, to protect the new neighbouring kitchen units. He also said what I was expecting, that there would need to be new electrical wiring, trip switches etc, because of installing a cooking hob and oven.
But he also told me what I feared, that the wall at the far end of the kitchen, beyond which is the shower room, was made of wooden boarding and not strong enough to support new kitchen wall units. It would have to be rebuilt. He also pointed out that the wall above the washbasin in the shower room, which is an outside wall, was extremely thin and lacking insulation. In simple terms, as well as refurbishing the kitchen, the shower room would also need to be rebuilt.
Just over a week later came the promised quotation, which included a contingency amount, depending on exactly what they discovered once the shower room was taken apart. I paid a deposit of CZK 50,000 and a start date of Monday 8th January 2018 was agreed. They couldn’t begin any earlier because of being busy with other projects.
At 08.40 on Monday 8th January 2018, just as promised, workmen arrived, along with the boss and Martin.
Following demolition, rebuilding began. Here is the outside wall of the shower room, insulated and re-lined with breeze blocks. On the left is where the dividing wall with the toilet once was – hence the old pipes and hanging wires.
Then, after one day when no further work was done, on Saturday 13th January came the plumbers. They carved channels in the breeze block walls and dug up the shower room floor to install new water and waste pipes.
Monday 15th January saw the arrival of two electricians. They also carved channels into walls to install all the new wiring for the cooking hob, oven, power points and lights.
Over the next three days, the walls were rendered and made smooth, ready to be tiled or have wall units attached. The heatproof walls either side of the wood-burning stove were also constructed. Of course, I couldn’t use the wood-burning stove whilst this was done, leaving us all rather cold. But I did get roaring in the evening, not least to help dry out the render on the walls.
On Sunday 21st January, I was left without electric power for over four hours whilst the electrician fitted this new set of circuit breakers/trip switches, successfully connecting all of his new wiring, as well as the existing wiring in the rest of the house.
The beginning of the third week saw the installation of my new sink with running hot & cold water & a functioning waste pipe. And the following day, after eight months in hibernation, my dishwasher was slotted into its new home. Unfortunately, it still had to be connected to the cold water supply & waste water drain.
Then on Saturday 27th January, both the electrician and plumbers returned. By early Saturday afternoon I finally had a fully functioning cooking hob, oven, extractor hood, power points, dishwasher, together with a washbasin & shower with running hot & cold water 🙂 🙂 🙂
Whilst I’m very pleased with the end result, living in the midst of a building site was not pleasant 🙁 Firstly, I never envisaged that the work would last for just over three weeks – a few further things were not completed until Monday 29th January.
Secondly, there was dust – everywhere. On the first day, the boss did erect a supposedly dust-protecting clear plastic zip-up door at the entrance to my study-bedroom. It helped, but the room still suffered. The rest of the downstairs had no protection. Dust came, initially from the demolition work, then from cutting breeze blocks. After that, it was the plumbers and the electricians, carving out channels in the walls and floors for their pipes and wires. Whilst after all that was complete, things did improve, latterly I still had the tiler cutting tiles 🙁
Then the everyday problem was how to wash and shave – I wasn’t able to have a shower for nearly three weeks!
I shaved each day, getting hot water into a plastic bowl, placing it on top of the chest of drawers in my bedroom, alongside the mirror on a stand that I normally only use for combing my hair.
To wash the rest of my anatomy, I made use of the baby bath that I still have from when my children, (now aged 37 and 33 🙂 ), were small. Since they ceased to use it for its original purpose, it has served as the perfect means of taking wet washing from the washing machine, to wherever it needs to be hung out to dry. I filled it with hot water, took it to my bedroom, knelt over it to wash my hair and stood in it to wash the rest of me.
The whole experience of doing this, reminded me of my early childhood. The house in which I lived until I was ten years old, had no heating in the bathroom. So in the winter months, I would have a bath once a week, sitting in a tin bath in front of an open fire, in the living room.
The other issue to cope with was having all of this work done in the middle of winter. On at least three mornings, the first thing I had to do was get outside and scrape away overnight snow from the path and the parking area at the front of the house, in advance of workmen arriving.
However, it is now done and I am still alive to tell the tale – just!
The main source of heating for my home in Stará Oleška is a wood-burning stove, located in the kitchen. The previous owners left a fair supply of split logs, stacked in one end of the woodshed, located on one side of the back garden. They also left a further supply of logs, mostly not split, sitting in a pile in the middle of the back garden, partially covered by various pieces of unsightly plastic that were doing very little to keep them dry.
Over a couple of days, very soon after moving here in mid-May 2017, Sybille and I, aided by two wheelbarrows, successfully moved all of that pile of logs, from the back garden, stacking them neatly with the other logs in the woodshed. The unsightly plastic was then deposited in the appropriate recycling bin in the centre of the village.
I regret not taking a photograph of the pile before we shifted it, but the photograph above shows the bare patch where it once stood, before I tackled the surrounding jungle. The photograph below was taken after the grass received its first hair cut of 2017.
Whilst this photograph, taken in early October 2017, shows that the bare patch had by then, begun to recover.
Because of all the logs left by the previous owners, heating the house for the first few months of this winter, has cost me absolutely nothing, beyond the effort expended in moving the pile from the garden and splitting all the unsplit logs.
Propped against the woodshed, were these longer tree branches, to which I added various pieces of scrap timber that I found in other corners of the garden. Early in October 2017, aided by an electric chainsaw, I reduced all of this timber to the correct length for the wood-burning stove.
And here it is, cut and stacked inside the woodshed. Because most of these pieces are relatively thin, they have been especially useful in getting a fire going, before adding heavier logs.
By late November, my supply of free logs was beginning to run low. Martin Tonder, the real estate agent who sold me the house, had previously told me that there would be no problem getting a further supply of logs as there were several people in the area, who were in the business of supplying them. So I tapped into his local knowledge once more.
Martin recommenced a Mr Kopecký and kindly arranged for a truck load of logs to be delivered to my back garden, on Tuesday 5th December 2017. Here they are beginning to be delivered 🙂 If any reader would also like a log supply, Mr Kopecký’s phone number is 605 298 734 🙂
At the end of Wednesday 6th December, there was still all these to move. Eventually, when it started to rain, I covered up the remaining pile as best I could and waited until the elements were more favourable.
I started again on the morning of Saturday 9th December, only for it to start snowing at lunchtime 😉
Further wintry weather has intervened, as illustrated in my previous post. Then I went to the UK for Christmas. However, since returning to the village to celebrate the arrival of the New Year, I’ve had two further sessions in the back garden. The second of these was yesterday on New Year’s Day when the final wheelbarrow load reached the shed. The results of my labours are difficult to photograph because the shed is so full. But the photograph below is the best I can manage.
Finally completing moving all my new log supply and successfully getting it stacked in the woodshed, has made a very satisfying beginning to 2018. Št’astný Nový Rok! Happy New Year!
This past weekend, winter has well and truly arrived in Stará Oleška. Whilst since the beginning of the month, snow fell on three or four occasions, it never amounted to much and rapidly melted. But the morning of Friday 15th December brought a more serious snowfall, and it has snowed again on several occasions since then and it is doing so once more, even as I write this blog post.
However, on the morning of Monday 18th, the snow stopped for several hours and the sun came out, enabling me to take the photographs accompanying this post. And to take the photograph on the left, I did go out through the side gate, to avoid having footprints in the snow on the path 🙂
Above is the view across the village from the road in front of my house, looking out towards Huntírov. In case anybody is interested, the yellow house in the centre of the photograph is currently for sale. The details can be found by following this link.
It has always amused me that one of the three camp sites located around the lake is entitled, in Anglicized form, ‘Autocamp Alaska’ – hardly the name I would choose for a summer camp site. But here it is, living up to its name 🙂
Finally for this post, a couple of beautiful snowy trees.
