Renovating a derelict Manor House in Portugal

Today is such an exciting day, the house will finally look somewhere near finished (though still work to do on the stone work around the windows)

When we bought the old Manor House, it had suffered over 40 years of neglect (as you can see from the photo) we wanted to return it to its former glory and the locals told us originally it had been white and yellow.

There was so much work to do to the outside before we could even begin to think about painting it.

There were no windows downstairs, just rotten shutters that had had bad repairs completed on them, the main doors had been replaced by badly fitted wooden doors and the upstairs had been replaced with aluminium windows.

Getting the new windows had been a nightmare, but we finally got as close as we could to what it would’ve looked like originally.

The other big problem we had was the amazing sandstone window frames, because of water damage over the many years, some of the stone had washed away. Luckily John was able to make a template and rebuilt the cornice with cement and lime. (we still have to paint those in a stone colour) This will kill John, but we have no choice, the original stone has been damaged too much to ever bring back to life.

Once the walls had been scraped, cleaned and filled it was ready to paint. This was a fun job as the building is about the height of an average 3 story building and all we had was extra long ladders. this meant John on the very top with me holding the bottom in place. Our lovely neighbours came out and put the red triangles on the roads to warn the drivers (luckily we don’t have fast cars here).

however even John could not get to the very top, to paint the yellow so we hired a cherry picker for the day, I have to say I felt so much safer with this and the fact that it had been arranged by a local builder who helped us for the day.

The village have all enjoyed watching the front of the house progress and now we are no longer the scruffs on the block!

If you are planning to do a renovation in Portugal and need a place to stay, take a look at this website for great accommodation, commission free and book direct with the owner

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For informative articles and information

Portugalholidays4u.com