Ten years in this house - and yet more minor improvements

I'm not very good with dates.

I know all the family's birthdays, but if it weren't for my Google calendar reminding me in advance, I might well forget about them until too late to send a card or gift. I often don't even notice dates that other people celebrate - Valentine's Day, for instance, or Mothering Sunday. Facebook is quite good at letting me know when we, and other nationalities mark an occasion, so I spotted that yesterday was Independence Day in the United States.

But I had entirely forgotten that today, July 5th, is quite an important anniversary for us. Happily, Facebook told me that I'd mentioned it a couple of times in previous years... and so, this blog post is to celebrate that it's ten years today since we bought our house in Cyprus.

I would have been a bit sad if I'd missed it this year, though I'm sure I don't always notice it. That's partly because of it being a round ten years, and partly because in the first six months of this year we've done a great deal to the house, in recognition of our having owned it for ten years. It was looking tired; we had done very little before this year, and some of the paintwork was looking terrible.

I've written at length about the damp proofing system which we had installed back in March.  We won't know how effective it is until next winter, but the guest flat already smells less musty.

Before that, we had employed our teenage friend Jacob to do some painting; many of our window frames had lost all the paint, and some were quite rotten. So he sanded and painted, and repaired, and then painted the places where the damp proof course was installed, and the front of the house downstairs, which spruced it up nicely.

Then in April we had our bathroom replaced, something we had talked about for many years, but finally did this year. We did the last few bits and pieces for that in May, and are still extremely pleased with it.

But one thing that Jacob kept putting off was painting the railings on our front patio. We weren't surprised; it's something we kept putting off too. It looked like a very fiddly and time consuming job. However, our good friend Sheila (Jacob's mother) said that she would like to do it for us, so she came over early in the morning several times, and did a great job. I didn't take many 'before' or 'after' photos, but did manage to get this one, right after she had painted one half of the gate:

The difference is stunning.

When it was finished, we realised how very tatty the postbox looked. Like in the United States, people in Cyprus don't have slots in their doors for mail, but have little boxes outside. We have a PO Box at the Post Office where we get most of our mail, but there are vast amounts of junk mail advertisements for shops and eateries which arrive regularly, and it's a legal requirement to have a post box near the street.

This is what the box looked like:

The lock was a bit rusty, and it looked terrible on our newly painted fence. We thought about painting it to match, but it would have been quite a task, and almost impossible to hold the flap and the opening door out of the way while the paint dried. It was held on the fence by ancient pieces of wire.

So when we had to make a trip to the local SuperHome Centre, for a couple of things, I had a look at the mail boxes. There were dozens of them in all kinds of shapes, sizes and colours. I nearly gave up when I spotted a small black one, at a good price, which would meet our needs perfectly. We bought a metallic number to affix, and Richard installed it... with cable ties:

On the same trip to the DIY store, we saw some mosquito netting that could be fitted to the window sections that open at the top of some of our doors. We thought it would be ideal for the one in the dining room, which we like to keep open in Spring and Autumn, but have had to close in the evenings to keep out mosquitoes.

So we bought it, and Richard installed it immediately:

It took a little getting used to, and now the weather is so hot that we mostly keep it closed if we want to be in the room in the evening, so we can use the air conditioning. But it should be very useful in the Autumn.

There are still a few small things that need to be done: the last bit of plastering and painting on the wall outside our bathroom, a new fitting in one of the loos, re-tiling in the guest flat bathroom. Our friendly local builder said he should be able to come some time this week. It will be good to have these last few bits done. There are still other more major jobs that the house needs, but we've had enough of house maintenance for now, and will leave the rest until next year.

Happy anniversary, house!

Replacing our bathroom....

It's coming up to ten years since we moved into our house in Cyprus. It's more than ten years since we first saw it, and pondered, and prayed, and decided that it was the right house to buy. As, indeed, the past decade has amply demonstrated.

But back in January 2006, we didn't know what to expect. We didn't really know what we were looking for although we had a few important criteria. At first we tried to find a four-bedroomed house, but they were too expensive in the area we wanted to live. So we started looking at three-bedroomed houses... only to have an estate agent take us a three-storey house which had three bedrooms on the ground floor, which is a separate flat, AND three bedrooms on the top floor, as well as a good-sized room off the living room which could be used as another bedroom.

We fell in love with the kitchen immediately, we saw lots of potential in the main living area, and although the bedrooms seemed a bit small compared to the ones in our rental home, we knew they would be fine.

But we really didn't like the bathroom.

It's not that it was too small, but there was a huge sink unit that seemed to take up almost half the floor space, and there was mould growing around the bath sealant (although everything else was scrupulously clean):

We really didn't like the colour, either. And whereas we could easily repaint other rooms (and did so before moving in) it's a lot more difficult to change bathroom tiles.

Thinking about the bathroom almost put us off the house entirely, but we went back for a second viewing. When we saw it again - and I took the above photo - we realised it wasn't as bad as we had remembered. We still didn't like the style or colours, but it was quite adequate; a great deal better than the one in our rental home (of which I don't think any of us ever took any photos).

Besides, with the amount we sold our UK house for, we had some 'change' when we went ahead with buying this one. We used some of it to buy important items such as a large freezer, and an electronic piano, and a television (since our previous one had quit some months previously), as well as a few extra bookcases. But we promised ourselves that once we'd settled in, we would do something about the bathroom.

Time, as it is wont to do, passed.

Richard replaced the sealant around the bath.

A few years ago, he managed to cut down the shower doors which were a bit broken and somewhat mouldy.

But it's continued to cause frustration. Nothing major, in the scheme of things, but it gets very damp, and the condensation turns to mould on the ceiling and wall tiles. I clean them regularly, but it grows back, and we don't always notice black on the ceiling. We could keep the window open, but it would be VERY cold in the winter. What it needs is an extractor fan... but that's not an easy thing to install without taking the bathroom apart.

The radiator, too, is extremely rusty. Each year it looks worse, and we wonder if it's going to leak. We muttered that it would be nice to have a heated towel rail...

We're not good at getting around to doing things, and time continued to pass, but we seriously needed a new shower on the ground floor (which we use as a guest apartment). The doors have been wonky since we moved in, and are getting worse. There's mould there too. And we have been given money specifically for the upkeep of the guest flat...

So at the end of last year, we started looking at new showers, and other bathroom fittings, curious to know what was available, and what the likely cost would be, and whether we would even be able to find anything suitable.

Finding a new shower for the guest flat wasn't too difficult, but we also wanted to know what might - theoretically - be possible in our main bathroom. We discussed having only a shower with no bath, to make it feel bigger. But occasionally we both like to take a bath, and it's important to have one for visiting children.

Visiting the bigger DIY stores was discouraging; nothing was inspiring, and we'd almost given up when we decided to look at a local bathroom supplies place. There we saw a corner bath, the kind of thing Richard had always rather craved, which would take up rather less space (or less awkward space, anyway) than our current bath.

We saw a sink we liked too, and Richard said he would be able to build a small, neat shelved unit to go around it.

I didn't think we needed a new loo; this is our current one:

But they're not expensive, and this one has a lot of scale (and needs a new seat lid anyway)... so we thought that if we were buying the rest new, we should go ahead with that, too.

We contacted the builder who has done some other work on the house, and he gave us a quotation for doing the entire bathroom - removing all the tiles and old units, plumbing in the new ones to our specifications, re-painting the ceiling, doing any necessary plastering, putting up tiles... at least a week's expert work. It wasn't cheap but not unreasonable either.

Richard was eager to go ahead, but I was still resistant. Partly because I have an inherent dislike of spending money on myself (part of my Scottish heritage, perhaps) and also partly because I find it extremely stressful having builders in the house, no matter how friendly and efficient they are. There's inevitable noise, and dust, and chaos... I really, really dislike it.

But I'd been wanting to spend a couple of weeks in the UK visiting relatives, as it's over a year since we've been, and so the idea formed that I would go on my own, and Richard would get the bathroom done in my absence.

The vague idea turned to more concrete plans in the past month. My flights and other travel arrangements are booked, and one of our bedrooms is currently full of bathroom fittings and fixtures. We've chosen tiles and paint, and the builders are booked for this week. They're going to replace the guest flat shower first, and that should have been happening today.

This morning Richard had a message to say that they're going to start a day late. They're still finishing a previous job that took longer than expected.

I can't say I'm unhappy about that. That means they'll do the guest flat shower tomorrow, and probably won't start work on the main part of the house until Wednesday, by which time I'll be a few thousand kilometres away.

The only slight problem is that the heated towel rail (to replace the rusty radiator) was not in stock when Richard put the order in, so had to be ordered from abroad. And last week there was a port strike in Limassol. I gather it's now been called off, so we hope that shipments will be unpacked and will make their way to the relevant stores in time for us, and for the many other frustrated customers awaiting bathroom and other parts.

Tomorrow morning I'll take my last shower in the present bathroom. I don't think I'll have any regrets... it's served us well for the past ten years, but I'm not going to miss it.

A Cyprus style damp proof course

When we first moved to Cyprus, someone explained to us that the older houses - and some of the newer ones - suffer from rising damp. Because of their construction, the kind of damp proof treatment that we knew of in the UK was not possible. However, we were assured, it wasn't a huge problem. With the long hot summers, everything dries out nicely, and it's easy enough either to rub down and repaint each year when damp showed in the walls, or to have a kind of hardboard layer in front of the walls to stop it showing.

That was all very well in the house we rented, which we knew would eventually be pulled down. And those were the drought years in Cyprus. But then we bought our own house ten years ago, and there has been more rain. Moreover, since we use our downstairs floor as a guest flat rather than living in it all the time, a musty smell developed in several cupboards. Guests in the warmer months have opened windows and doors and let fresh air in, but those staying in the winter have experienced problems with mould growing on walls of one of the bedrooms, and the bathroom ceiling. It was fairly easy to wash off with some vinegar, but we started talking about what we could do to decrease the damp and condensation.

Doing some research online, we both came across the site of 'Dr Damp'. This is a company who claim to do the only reputable damp-proofing in Cyprus, and to have gained a good reputation across Europe. So, at the end of January, we arranged for them to come and do a survey. Richard went around the guest flat with the guy who came, watching the damp meter and learning about the method they use. We were told that we did have a damp problem: not yet a serious one, but it could become one in the next few decades. The system is guaranteed for twenty years and it sounded entirely reputable, if rather expensive.

Since it's Cyprus we wanted a personal recommendation rather than just affirmations on the website, and a friend remembered that some other friends had had a damp-proof system installed a year or two previously. I got in touch, and we were assured that the Dr Damp team do a great job, and are friendly and professional. It all seemed like a good thing to get done, and we inherited money from my mother a couple of years ago... so we booked the treatment for the second week of February, knowing that the flat was going to be empty from then until almost the end of the month.

Despite the company being based in Paphos, the men arrived fairly early on the Monday morning, and the house reverberated with power tools for several hours as they drilled out the rectangular holes that form the first part of the process for all the external walls.  These are what we saw, all around the outside of the house, by the end of the first day:

They don't go right through to the inside so it's not going to create draughts.

By the end of the second day, the special system was in place - here's a different part of the wall, showing how they had to cut away some of the paintwork to install each one.

The men were indeed very friendly - even helping to rescue our cat Alexander when he got stuck up a neighbour's tree - and cleaned up all the mess they had made, roughly plastering over the worst of the bits of wall they had hacked away.

There were some internal walls that were damp too, and they had to be treated with chemicals, so we had to move everything out of the way so they could do that:

If you think that really doesn't look too bad, this is what the guest flat kitchen/dining room looked like by the time furniture and various other things had been moved to enable the damp proofing:

After three days the Dr Damp guys left, and we paid our teenage friend Jacob to do the plastering and repainting, and some other painting that was long overdue.

Here's the first stage, around the new system. Of course it was important not to fill in the holes around the triangular stone things: that's where the airflow, in and out, removes damp from the walls.

Unfortunately, in rubbing down and sanding some of the exterior paintwork and plaster, more pieces fell off, showing that the damp had indeed taken a hold in places. So Jacob worked rather more hours than we had anticipated, but did an excellent job.  By the time he had finished, the damp proof system looked more like this:

Once the sanding and necessary inside painting was complete, we had quite a job to clean the guest flat, which by that stage was covered with a fine layer of dust. So we removed and dusted all the books (only about a thousand of them, but still... quite a task), and I washed every single piece of bedding that I could find, and all the towels and curtains too.  The washing machine was in use at least a couple of times every day - thankfully it was good drying weather - and I also used our carpet shampooing machine to clean all the mattresses.

We swept and dusted and mopped several times, and I also sorted some of the kitchen cupboards, cleaning away any mould that had grown, washing all the things inside, and getting rid of some bits and pieces that had evidently never been used.

And, at last, the living room was back to its usual self, albeit rather cleaner than it has been for a while, in preparation for our end-of-February visitors:

The kitchen, too, was clean and sparkling, the windows freshly washed, the floor reflecting the sunlight:

We were told that it could take two or three months before the damp smells vanished entirely, but the bathroom cupboard - which was very bad - smelled fresher within about a week, and the kitchen cupboards are a great deal less musty than they were, although not yet perfect.

This won't entirely solve the condensation problem: however, Richard is going to install an extractor fan in the bathroom, and we hope that the reduction of damp in general will make the master bedroom less likely to grow mould on the walls too. 

Spicy confusion... and a happy resolution

One of the things we loved about this house, when we first saw it almost exactly seven years ago, was the kitchen. It was well organised, with a lot of attractive wooden cupboards. It had a dishwasher - a big plus point for me - and an electric oven with a gas hob, my ideal combination.

It also had a rather neat little shelf arrangement above the oven, intended - we assumed - for holding little jars of herbs and spices. Whether or not that was the intent, that's what I put there when we moved in. Except that it took me ages to find anything, and sometimes we had too many to fit.  So after a year or two,  I organised them alphabetically, which helped somewhat. But there were still too many... and so random jars were put on a different shelf, and the alphabetical system fell down almost completely.

Then, in about the middle of last year, I realised, in a stroke of sheer brilliance, that the easiest thing would be to put the spices - which I use quite a lot - in the convenient shelf:

While keeping herbs (and replacement spices, on occasion) in the other little shelf next to the oven: 

I'm not renowned for good organisation, and it took me long enough to come up with this idea... but it seems to work very well. Everything fits nicely, and the alphabetical system makes it easy to find everything.

Except for one little detail...

I had two spice jars of the same brand, containing powders of the same colour, and they came next to each other in the alphabet: 

Not really a problem, as they are clearly labelled. And while I normally use real garlic, crushed, in curries or carrot-ginger soup, it wouldn't matter if I accidentally sprinkled in some extra garlic rather than ginger. Particularly if I noticed what I was doing so that I then added the ginger anyway.

It would, however, be a big problem if I put garlic powder in gingerbread. And very strange if I sprinkled ginger rather than garlic powder on roasted tomatoes, or potato wedges. So I was careful, and tried to remember to check the label every time. Once or twice I did get very close to adding the wrong item... it's so easy just to pull a jar off the shelf in auto-pilot without bothering to look at the label. When suffering from a long cold, as has been the case recently, my sense of smell isn't been too great.

What concerned me the most was that I like to sprinkle half a teaspoon or so of ginger powder onto my breakfast each morning. There are times when I have breakfast fairly early, somewhat in a zombie-like fashion because I'm not yet fully awake. Or, by contrast, I sometimes feel shattered after going for a 4km walk, buying fruit, and cleaning the house before breakfast.

So although - thankfully - I never did make the mistake of sprinkling garlic on my granola and yogurt, I felt faintly anxious about it every time. In a low-key sort of way, which I didn't quite realise until, running out of ginger recently, I spotted this jar in a local shop:

A different brand! 

It doesn't look like the garlic powder!

There is no way I would accidentally pick up the wrong one....just so long as the garlic doesn't start coming in this kind of container too. 

They - whoever 'they' might be - say that small things please small minds. So when I say that this quite made my day, I wonder if this means that I am just a Bear of Very Little Brain.  

Featuring falls and feet

On Sunday afternoon, had you chanced to call by our house, you would have found me, if not sitting down, doing something like a hop-shuffle. 

I was not practising tap dancing. Far from it. No, I had been oddly clumsy, about an hour before we had lunch...

But first, I should backtrack some more, to Monday last week. We were on our way to play a Settlers game with our friends, walking our usual route after dark when, to quote Dr Seuss in one of my favourite children's books, 'I stubbed my big toe on a very hard rock, and I flew through the air and I went for a sail...'*

The rock was actually a large stone thing near the edge of the pavement, supposedly to prevent cars from parking there, and it was totally in shadow as we walked... because there was a car parked right beside it.   I was chatting with Richard... and suddenly I was flat on my face. It was extremely painful, and I could feel blood beneath my chin. My right knee was hurting too. So I hobbled the last few yards to our friends' home, where I bathed my chin and knee (which was bleeding, although, oddly enough, my jeans had not sprung a hole) and put some arnica cream on the places where I felt bruised but not bleeding. 

I felt somewhat in shock, and it was painful to talk (worse to smile or laugh) but I managed to play a game and then walk home, and by the following morning felt mostly fine. My jaw was a little achey and my knee had a big scab, but otherwise I seemed none the worse for my experience.

Fast forward to Sunday, when I'd almost forgotten about the indignity of falling over. I was wearing flip-flops, as I usually do around the house in warmish weather, and was about to pop upstairs for something. I think my right flip-flop must have somehow flop-flipped underneath me, so instead of stepping onto the first (marble) step, my toes hit it, and I tripped and fell. I caught myself on some of the higher steps, but somehow bashed the top of my foot extremely hard. 

It was very, very painful. I could not put my foot down, at first. To get anywhere at all, even to a chair, I had to hop. Richard fetched me a bag of ice so I could hold it against my foot, raised on a beanbag, to try and ease the pain somewhat. And yes, the first sharp pangs did ease a little; after lunch I took some aspirin in the hope of both reducing the swelling and the pain. 

Despite - or perhaps because of - having grown up around medics, I tend to avoid doctors or hospitals whenever possible. I didn't think I had broken anything, and when I asked knowledgeable friends on Facebook, they all seemed to agree that even if an x-ray showed that I had cracked a bone in a toe, nothing would be done other than strapping it to the next one, and telling me to rest. 

Hopping wasn't really helpful because every time I hopped, my right toes and foot jarred badly, and I was worried about overbalancing.  So I came up with the idea of encasing my foot in a lengthy roll of bubble wrap:

I found that, with this soft pad, I could put my foot gingerly down and shuffle around the house, at least on the level. I didn't attempt much, but it was better than being unable to visit the bathroom or get a drink of water. In order to go upstairs to bed in the evening I had to sit down on the stairs and reverse up, which wasn't easy, but it worked. 

I went downstairs the same way on Monday morning, and was pleased to find that, with the bubble wrap, I could now hobble around without too much pain. We didn't have any surgical tape, but masking tape worked well to tape my right toes together, to stop them jarring as I hobbled. Two of my toes looked very bruised, as did about half of the top of my foot, but most of the time there was almost no pain, for which I was very thankful. I remembered to elevate the foot as much as possible, too, and found I could even sit at my desk and type with my foot up: 

In the evening, we had been invited out to supper with our friends Mark and Joan. I'd let Joan know what I'd done, and they did offer to bring the meal to us here... but I was feeling somewhat cabin-feverish and said I would prefer to get out. I noticed that my foot was not as swollen as it was, and found that I could even fit a trainer on, with the laces very loose. So, clinging onto the banister, I hobbled down our outside stairs, and Richard drove me the half kilometre or so to our friends' apartment. Thankfully they have a good lift in their building, and not far to walk.

By bedtime, having made my way up two flights of stairs, my foot was aching once more, but I was glad to have been able to get out.

On Tuesday morning I felt so much better that I wore my flip-flops, and progressed to limping around the house. I hadn't cleaned the floors for several days, and they were looking pretty bad, so I swept and mopped the entire main level.. .it wasn't until I had nearly finished that my foot began aching again. Perhaps I over-did it. I took it easy for the rest of the day, and hoped that by Wednesday it would be significantly better once more - and was then disappointed that I was still limping and didn't feel much improvement at all.

This morning I was pleased to find that I have progressed further, to the stage of walking awkwardly rather than limping. At least, that's how it feels to me. I suppose the healing process is likely to be slow, now that the worst is over... and I'm just hoping that clumsiness and falls are not going to be a regular feature of my advance through middle age.

As I said on Facebook, I hope that I will never again take for granted the ability to walk without pain.


* from: I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew

The transformation of Daniel's room...

It's the end of another era, in a way.

When we moved to this house, five and a half years ago, Daniel had already left home. But it was important to us to have a bedroom for him, which we painted in a colour of his choice, and hung the curtains I'd made for his room at our previous house. Richard also put together Daniel's bed, transported out from our UK house.

After discussion with Daniel, on the other side of the world, Richard then built a desk unit underneath the bed:


.. and, by the time Daniel was ready to come back to Cyprus for a three-month furlough early in 2008, the desk was varnished, and a new set of bookshelves had appeared at the end:



Daniel used his bed again in 2010 when he had his second three-month furlough in Cyprus. But in April this year, as regular readers of these posts will be aware, Daniel married Becky. They hope to come and visit us in January some time, but will be staying in our guest flat. We talked about turning Daniel's room into a double guest room, but it wouldn't exactly be used very much since we have the entire ground floor of this house available for visitors.

We may well move our double sofa-bed (currently in my study) up there at some point. But in the meantime, Richard is taking a six-month sabbatical from work. Among other things, he plans to write his second book. And he has wanted a study of his own for some time.  So... the obvious room to use is Daniel's.

Happily, when we offered his high bed with built-in desk to our friends, their eldest daughter said she would like it. So yesterday Richard dismantled it, with Tim's help, and then remantled (if that's not a word, it should be) the bed at our friends' house.

Ikea has proved useful once more, so that Richard now has a comfortable chair for reading in, even if Tessie thinks it was bought for her benefit:


And he has constructed a kind of desk out of a couple of inexpensive Ikea tables:


The chair is his office one, borrowed for the duration. Since it's important for an office chair to be comfortable, and one can't sit in every Ikea chair for half an hour or more to test them, the best idea seemed to be to use one which he knows from experience suits him.

It looks good. I'm sure it will be useful. At the same time, it feels like another bittersweet stage in the 'empty nest' journey.

Adding another bookcase to our collection...

It is, of course, pretty much impossible to have too many books. However, it's entirely possible to have too many books to fit on one's current bookcases.

Early in our marriage, such a situation would cause Richard to mutter something akin to blasphemy... about 'getting rid' of books. Thankfully he soon learned one does not 'get rid' of books. One might, if one has duplicates, donate one or two to a charity shop. One might, if one's children have outgrown 'easy-read' books donate them to relatives or friends with younger children, although even that is something of a wrench. But in general, the correct response to having more books than bookcase space is: 'we need a new bookcase'.

Despite the rate of increase of books to our house reducing somewhat (thanks to my Kindle, and a strange feeling that perhaps we're almost approaching saturation point, book-wise) we had reached the stage of having more books than shelving-for-books a few months ago. I can usually deal with this by having a significant number of books out on loan at any one stage, but one friend went away for a few months and returned ten without borrowing any more... and I think it's possible that books breed, when left in peace. Here's how our living room (non-fiction) bookcases looked a few days ago:


Yes, there was only one extra pile of books, but the others were jammed in solidly, and there was no room at all for any more. We've moved some to the guest flat but that's also running out of space for books - and since people only usually stay there for a week or two, they are unlikely to need a thousand or so books to choose from.

The fiction ones in the dining room are worse, and we haven't quite decided what to do about those. But I kept looking at the non-fiction bookcases, and getting out my tape-measure, and realised that the black bookcase, shelving DVDs in the photo (perpendicular to the dark brown ones) would in fact fit on the same wall as the other two, if we moved them along a little. And Richard had been saying, for about four years, that we should really run a cable behind the two dark brown bookcases so as to be able to use a lamp we were given that sits on a table out of reach of any plug socket...

So we pondered getting another one to fit there, but wondered if it would all look too dark. Besides, Ikea is in Nicosia, a good half hour's drive from here, and I'm not a fan of shopping in general. So probably nothing would have happened if Richard hadn't received a call from some local friends. The office where they work is closing, and they are taking some of the rather nice bookcases from it; so they have three which they now want to pass on to someone else. And they thought of us. So, the following day we went to have a look, and were excited to see that one of the bookcases is an Ikea one. Pine coloured rather than dark, but we thought that might be all right. And two smaller bookcases. We said we would definitely like the Ikea one and would think about the others.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to collect the Ikea one. It was heavy, but in slow stages Richard and I managed to get it up our outside stairs and into the house. Then we had to remove ALL the books from the dark brown bookcases so that they could be moved, and so that Richard could make the skirting-board cut-out bit a little bigger, to take a cable.

I forgot all about taking a photo until Richard had cut the holes and moved the bookcases, and I had cleaned the rather yucky area behind and underneath. He put the Christian books back in their bookcase quickly, and we found that we didn't need to take all the DVDs out of the black bookcase in order to move it. I'd just started putting the general non-fiction books back when I thought I should probably take a picture of the mess:


Then I put more of the books back, spreading them out a little. Then we moved the new bookcase to its position, and put all the DVDs in it:


We were pleased that it looked just fine to have light wood there. Rather better than the black did, in fact. Richard plugged in the lamp just to check that it would actually work after all this time, and we were pleased to find that it did:


Then I decided to try a few ornaments on the empty shelves so that the black bookcase didn't look too bare while awaiting more books. And after a few experiments (I am far from artistic) settled on this look, with two photos, three animal ornaments (which once belonged to my grandmother), and the digital photo frame:


I'm surprised how much better it looks, and not too crowded at all.

The whole process was complete in about two and a half hours ,but it's getting warm in Cyprus now and we were exhausted by the time we had finished!

Cyprus appliances

There are those who assume that Cyprus is still a developing country. Or at least that it's fifty years or so out of date. People are often surprised to find that we have broadband internet, mostly good (and very inexpensive) mobile telephony, online banking and fewer power cuts than some parts of the UK. OK so there's no mains gas, the sewage system is still rather antiquated, and things rarely start on time. There's no grocery shopping on the Internet, and it's still very much a patriarchal society.

Many Cypriots employ 'maids' - often from Asian countries, who can earn more here than they can back home. Unfortunately some of them are not treated very well. We don't have the inclination, or the room, or the funding to employ someone to do the shopping, cleaning and cooking, no matter how tempting it might sometimes seem in hot weather.

But I do have a little army of servants in my kitchen, whom I instruct in the mornings and at other random times of day. Sometimes before 9am I have thanked the dishwasher for cleaning yesterday's dishes, told the washing machine to clean another set of clothes, instructed the juicer to make us some nutritional fresh juice for breakfast, informed the coffee machine that I need some coffee to take to Richard, set the breadmaker off to bake us some bread for lunch, and started the yogurt maker with another batch to be ready by the evening. I will have used the fridge several times without even thinking about it, and quite likely the kettle too. A couple of years ago we added a slow-cooker to the kitchen servants, and until recently I might well have arranged for that to be gently simmering away all day too:


And of course I rely totally on my computer to keep in touch with family and friends, store and organise my photographs, and write my blogs.

So yes, we have just about all mod-cons available in Cyprus.

And just like the rest of Europe, they don't seem to last. Unlike the old twin-tub washing machines that probably kept running for thirty or forty years, modern appliances seem to start wearing out after a year or two. Four years is considered a good life; seven outstanding.

It's four years yesterday since we bought and moved into this house. Four years since we bought some new appliances that we needed, putting our older ones in the ground floor guest flat.

I was mildly annoyed, a week or two ago, when my USB hub suddenly stopped working. I don't think it was even four years old; Tim bought it for me a while ago - so it may have been three and a half years old. It's done good service, in use constantly. Daniel and Richard told me it wasn't mendable, so Richard bought and set up a new one.

I wouldn't have thought anything more about it, until Daniel pointed out that the 'enter' key on my keyboard was broken. I hadn't noticed, but it was indeed rather wobbly. If I wasn't careful, it fell off completely:


But the keyboard was working fine, other than that, even if most of the letters had been rubbed off through constant use. I've had that keyboard for over five years, so it's done very well.

More worrying was to notice a crack running right the way through the crockpot part of the slow-cooker:


I spotted it last time I used it, after seeing that some liquid from the casserole I made had leaked out. The crockpot still felt fairly firm, but I had visions of Richard lifting a heavy chili out of the slow-cooker only to have the crockpot fall into two pieces dumping a lot of hot food down his front and all over the floor. It wasn't worth the risk. And although it's only about two years old, we bought it in Nicosia, and I very much doubt if a crack like that would be covered under the guarantee. I probably used something too cold in it. Or if I didn't, the company would say I probably did.

So I stopped using the slow cooker.

Then the electric kettle stopped working. It happened first a few weeks ago, when Daniel accidentally switched it on empty. Richard took it to pieces, determined that it wasn't mendable, put it back together... and found that it worked.



But the same thing happened (my fault this time) last week, and it didn't seem worth taking apart yet again. The kettle was over four years old, and thus probably on its last legs. Thankfully we had a whistling kettle that sits on the stove, which Tim gave me, so we used that instead. Slower, but worked perfectly well.

Then on Sunday, Daniel was cleaning the pyrex jug of the coffee-maker (four years old) and a piece of it broke out of the side:


Neither Daniel nor Richard will drink instant coffee unless they have no alternative; but we have a cafetiere as well, so it wasn't a huge disaster. However that only makes about two cups at a time, and we frequently have to make more coffee than that. Sometimes we have to make some regular coffee and de-caff in an evening.

So.

Yesterday, I was doing our accounts, as I usually do on Monday. And noticed that we still have quite a lot of money in our virtual 'family gifts' account - where we put money given to us jointly at Christmas or other occasions, so that it doesn't end up used for everyday items.

While we hate throwing out appliances, it does seem that they are disposable. There was no point keeping a broken kettle, coffee maker and slow cooker in the kitchen just taking up space. So I tentatively suggested that we might at least see what was available to replace one or more of these items.

After much discussion, we went to the big Orphanides. There were a surprising number of filter coffee machines, at a wide variety of prices. Neither of us is at all good at making decisions. It was easy to reject the very expensive ones, and the ugly ones, and the white plasticky looking machines. We narrowed it down to three possibilities quite quickly. Eventually Richard chose this Krups machine, since he knew it was a good brand:


While he was making the final decision, I wandered around the electrical department, and saw that they had slow cookers. They had the 6.5 litre size, which we bought before since it was the only one we could find anywhere in Cyprus. They also had the 3.5 litre size, which is what we had actually intended to buy a couple of years ago. The price wasn't too bad - so we decided we would get one of those too:


Then we looked at kettles. Oh my - so much choice. We quickly rejected the ones with plastic sides as I don't like the smell of the water boiled in most of those. I'd quite have liked one with glass sides, like the one we had before, but there weren't any. So we looked at several made of metal... and eventually chose this one, mainly based on its price:


I hate spending so much money all at once. But at least we didn't have to pay for the repair when our blender went wrong recently.

So... we were about to pay for these three items when I remembered my keyboard. Daniel reckons that supermarkets are the best place to buy keyboards and mice, as they're much better value than computer shops. Orhpanides had four different keyboards, all of them suitable for my needs, ranging from 15.99 euros to 19.99. I liked the most expensive one best. My instinct was to buy the cheapest... and yet, there was only a five euro difference between the two. And I do a lot of typing.

So - with a little persuasion from Richard - I chose this one:


... and we made our purchases. A moving-in anniversary present to our house.

Plumbers on our roof

When we moved to our house, a little over three years ago, we noticed that there was a very slow d-r-i-p.... d-r-i-p.... onto the balcony outside our bedroom. It didn't seem like a big deal. Perhaps some pipe, we thought, with a very slow leak. Or just an interesting feature of our new home.

As the months went by, it seemed that the drip got faster. It made little puddles on the balcony during the winter, although they usually evaporated during the day.

And then it started to become worse. It made sufficient of a puddle that the overflow pipe from the balcony started dripping water down onto the paving below. I was convinced one of our water tanks was leaking. Richard went up and looked two or three times, with various people who understand water tanks and plumbing better than he did. They agreed that something was leaking, and that we would probably need a new water tank.

A year ago, when we were in the UK, our house-sitter placed an empty dustbin underneath the overflow from the balcony. It was getting so bad that, even in the middle of a Cyprus summer (when temperatures in the shade are at least 32C) it was still dripping constantly through the overflow and down to the ground.

Then I realised that when we had guests staying in the downstairs flat, the dripping was not so excessive. Indeed, if we had people who were using the washing machine, and having a lot of showers, the only time the drip reached the dustbin was when the mains water was on (every other day) filling the tank up as fast as it was used. Evidently it was the guest flat tank that was leaking.

Every so often, we looked at each other, and said we must do something about it. But it wasn't until a couple of months ago, when the drip became a constant flow of water, and one of our neighbours commented, that Richard actually got in touch with a plumber - someone he had used at the office.

He came and looked. Yes, we needed a new water tank. But the design of the old one wasn't made any more, so it would have to be ordered. And they'd have to do some welding, since the design of the old metalwork wouldn't fit the new tank, and was a bad design anyway, contributing to the hole that had developed, half-way up the guest flat tank.

Richard asked about the pump downstairs, too, which had a slow leak. And also asked whether it would be possible to have a switch so that the solar panels could be used to heat only our hot water when we don't have guests staying in the winter. And the plumber noticed a problem with our compression tank.

Evidently it was going to be an expensive job... or series of jobs, as there were so many things to do. But it had to be done, since our water bills for the guest flat were increasing rapidly, and we're not supposed to waste water. We could hardly criticise our neighbours for hosing their cars and patios if we were losing half a tank of water every other day from a leaky tank.

So the plumbers came, and went, and came again... they know their way through our bedroom to the balcony, and gradually the various jobs were done. For the first ten days, they arranged for our water tank to feed both parts of the house, while the guest tank was mostly emptied. That stopped the leaking, but also meant that we ran out of water a couple of times, when we had guests staying. Not a huge deal as it ran out on days when the mains was on, slowly filling it up again. But mildly annoying.

Then they came with a new tank, which they got on the roof and attached. They fixed the compression tank. A welder made the necessary constructions. I just stayed in my study while all this went on around me, and the cats joined me. Some days, water poured away, totally wasted. Our bills are not going to be lower next time, although we hope they might be eventually. And with the solar panels giving us more heat in the winter (when nobody is staying downstairs) we shouldn't need so much electricity to heat water for showers.

Here's the setup, with the new water tank for the guest flat:

 

Today they came again to fix another minor leak they discovered, and to do something else to the pump. There's still one minor thing to do, apparently, but they need another small part... and in the middle of August, most plumbing suppliers (along with many businesses, and non-food shops) are closed for a couple of weeks.

But we no longer have continual dripping. The balcony is no longer damp. And the water pressure in our upstairs bathroom is incredible!

Three years in our house

It's three years since we moved to our house.

Actually, it's three years and one day. I completely forgot about the anniversary being yesterday. But the move took several days... from getting the keys (and being able to paint) to actually sleeping there was a four day process. Completion - and the handing over of a very large cheque - took place in the middle.

It seems like a very long time ago now. At the same time, I'm not entirely sure where the past three years have gone. Time has a way of speeding up and slowing down that is really best described by Terry Pratchett's idea of 'history monks' who forever have to untangle chronological problems, by borrowing time from here and adding it into there...

Of course, it's also an indication that we're made for Eternity, rather than our time-centric life on Earth counted by hours and days and years.

We are still extremely thankful for this house, which - in retrospect - we can see that we bought at exactly the right time from the financial perspective. I still don't regret not having a garden. And the guest flat - our ground floor apartment - is being very well-used. In 2007 it was occupied for about a third of the time. Last year it was nearer half of the time. This year, it's been occupied two-thirds of the time. We're starting to get requests that we have to turn down, because it's already booked up.

Another visit to Ikea and the Mall of Cyprus

I've always liked the Ikea style of furniture, but when we lived in the UK we only went there a couple of times. Perhaps because it was half an hour's drive to get there.

But we're big fans of Ikea here. It's been opened for a year in Cyprus, and it's half an hour's drive away... but we've already been three times. We went in December last year, when we bought various useful bits and pieces that we simply can't find anywhere else. We returned a few weeks later to buy a bookcase for our DVDs. And a smaller bookcase that we knew we would need somewhere. And some more bits and pieces... it's funny how we seem to go for one thing, and find several other items at excellent prices, which we didn't even realise we needed...

We went again in June, when we also visited the Mall of Cyprus. We were looking for blackout blinds, but - of course - bought a few other things too.

We finally put together the smaller bookcase just a couple of weeks ago. And when we'd done so, we knew that we could use the same size of bookcase in our dining room, where we had two large bookcases, and three small rattan ones. Unfortunately the cats think rattan bookcases are scratching posts, so they were getting progressively more and more destroyed.

We were also running out of space for our fiction library; it's probably only about 1000 books that we keep in the dining room (we keep most of the children's books downstairs in our guest flat) but they were getting squashed into the shelves. I was relying on other people borrowing them in order to have space for the ones that were left. When we were in the UK during the summer, I bought about twenty more fiction books... and there simply wasn't room for them.

So, we decided to splash out. We have a fund of money given us by various people at Christmas (and occasionally other times) which we're told to spend on something we WANT. Money given just to Richard generally goes on sailing things. Money given just for me usually goes on books. But when it's for both of us, we try and look for furniture or appliances that we both like.

So, we drove to Nicosia yesterday afternoon. First, we went to the Mall of Cyprus, where we popped into Carrefour... I had been thinking about having a slow cooker (aka crockpot) and we found one at an excellent price. Since it's Cyprus, we didn't have to choose between umpteen models and sizes: there was just one model. Two in stock. And since Morphy Richards is a good brand, we bought it. Rather bigger than I had intended, but that's not a bad thing.


Then we drove to the next door car park, so we could go to Ikea. We found the bookcases we wanted; they were - slightly to our surprise - all in stock. We went fairly quickly through Ikea, so as to avoid spotting dozens of useful things that we had never thought of - although we did pick up a couple of very nice candle holders, and some photo frames which we had wanted.

However, instead of several small items, we saw a drop-leaf table that we both liked very much. It's exactly what we'd been thinking of for the space next to our freezer: we needed a table of some sort there to put desserts or drinks on when we have potluck meals, and as an extension for when we have more than ten people to a meal.

We got everything home. We struggled up the steps - Richard carrying most of it, since Tim is no longer here to help! - and then decided it would be best to make everything that evening, otherwise we would have boxes sitting around for weeks...

So Richard started with the table.


It was more complex than I had expected, but Ikea instructions are really very good, and he soon had it together. It looks exactly right, too.


Then he started on the bookcases. Of course, the cats were very interested in all that was going on. Cleo started climbing in empty boxes, and batting about loose nails and screws. Tessie looked as if she was going to use one as a litter tray, so we put her outside quickly. And Sophia, as usual, wanted to be right where the action was:


Once the first bookcase was made, I had to start moving the books around, a job I always enjoy doing. I suppose it took a couple of hours in all, but eventually we finished, and were very pleased with how the dining-room/library looks:


Two of the rattan bookcases will be moved to Richard's office guest accommodation, where they should survive at least a while longer since there are no cats there.

And the third one is - for now, anyway - sitting in an empty niche we had on our staircase. We'd tried putting a plant there, but it didn't survive. Richard has a bookcase in the bedroom with art and sailing books, but they were overflowing, so he's moved some of the art books to this rattan case:


The cats aren't quite sure what to make of it. Perhaps they'll stop scratching it, since they don't often sit on the stairs.

Cleo and Tessie seem to be ignoring the new table and bookcases now they're installed as furniture, but Sophia is claiming them as her own: