4th August - More tiling.

As the whole cave is tiled on the floor this takes some time so more tiling this week. Also the bathrooms need to be tiled. We decided to go for normal ceramic tiles from floor to ceiling height. You will see a number of cave bathrooms that use stone cladding, similar to what we have on the bottom of the outside wall. We have been advised that although this looks good it is a nightmare to keep clean so ceramic tiles it is.

9th August - Outside painted.

The outside of the cave has now been painted. Although it is difficult to tell the exact colour from the photo Robyn approves of it.

As it is the local holiday there won’t be a lot happening for a week or so.

9th September - Shopping Trip.

OK so its a month since the last update but I did warn you it was holiday time and many of the local villages and towns are in the middle of fiesta season so things moved a bit slowly in August. The good news though is that I have just returned from a fixtures and fittings shopping trip so lots more photos.

The trip was to check out progress, make some decisions and primarily to sort out the furniture and fittings. We now have decisions made on the beds, sofas, tables and chairs, kitchen equipment, wood burning stoves, cooker, fridge, freezer, washing machines, kitchen wall tiles and knives, forks, plates, mugs and pots and pans. They should all be delivered during the first few weeks of October.

So where do you go for all of these, well the road out of Baza towards the motorway has a number of furniture shops and with some careful searching there are some great bargains to be found. The Baza market also proved useful for a number of items we were warned we would need to bring from the UK. In particular a kettle for the gas cooker as we don’t have proper power yet for an electric one. The other places well worth a visit are the large Carrefour and Alcampo in Granada. Great for bedding and kitchenware. The main issue was the lack of single duvets which we are going to have to get in the UK and send out.

Now a few more pictures showing some close-up details of things featured earlier in the site.

1st October - Back to work.

After a slight hiatus while the crew finished another cave, funnily enough the one we originally wanted before we found this one, its back to work. We are due out at the end of October for half-term and we are hoping things will be finished, at least internally, by then.

So its back to tiling for the family bathroom and getting all the plumbing sorted. As we are not on mains water we aren’t on mains drainage either so the JCB is back to dig the hole for the cesspit and the waste pipework.

22nd October - Big excitement - our first stay.

Well its half term so we are out to stay for a week. We are staying at Cueva de Mama for the first time. Most of the furniture I bought last visit is out and we’ve taken my parents with us. We arrived at 9:30 after going to Carrefour in Granada straight from the airport. This seemed like a good idea until we realised most of the rest of Granada had the same idea and it took us nearly half an hour to get from the motorway junction to the shops.

The generator was in and running so we even had lights. There were still a number of rooms unfinished so we stayed in the left hand side of the cave using the kitchen and everything left of that. Matilda had set out the hall as a dining room and through the week we decided it would stay just like that as we would just have a large unused room otherwise. The outside wall had been started and the plumbing was operational.

28th October - End of our first week.

While we were there the boys, Antonio, Manolo and the other Antonio, kept going and we saw great strides in just a week. The patio was started and completed, the pergola built, the outside wall was finished and the fireplace in the living room was well under way.

30th October - End of the trip, start of the journey.

We will be back in December when we expect everything to be finished so this is probably the last update prior to making the finished cave gallery. We have had great fun and satisfaction getting from an unreformed cave to a habitable and thoroughly enjoyable holiday home. As we get to know and explore our new environment we’ll be adding other things to the site. If you are thinking of undertaking something similar then we wish all the very best and hope your end product is as satisfying as ours.