Life is Like a Box of Chocolates. You Never know What You Gonna Get.

While we were struggling to get a loan to buy our house we of course knew that real work and stress will begin after the terror of the banks is over, but as the process was so stressful already we had no idea what to expect. 

We were planning to do a very basic renovation in two rooms, move in quickly and then slowly start renovating the house while living in it. It is, of course, not the ideal way, but living on our own ground and being able to renovate every available moment seemed like the best solution for us. 

But then after we got the house we found the Serpula lacrymans mushroom eating up our front wall which mixed our plans up quite a bit.

It appears that battling this mushroom is quite a big (and expensive) bit of work! 

First we will have to remove the floor and 50cm of soil in two rooms (all together 60m2, which is 30m3 of soil) and everything covering the walls. As hiring people to do that would be ridiculously expensive we will do this ourselves. Which basically means mr M will do it as I spend time with mr N and heal my back which was operated a while ago. 

Second comes in the mushroom fighting crew taking out big bits of wall and replacing the dead timber, spraying and impregnating with repellent and heating the soil to prevent the mushroom from regrowing.

Only after that can we insert the temporary floor, carry the furniture into the now mushroom-less rooms and start renovating the part of house we were first planning to.

As you might expect we are probably not moving in any time soon..!

So what to do in such a situation? 

At the moment we live in a rental 60km from the house and 100km from mr M's workplace which means a lot of driving for him and even more alone-home-time for mr N and me. 

So.. we bought a caravan! 

Yes, we are crazy like that, but this hopefully means that once weather gets warmer we will be able to move the - then renovated - caravan to our orchard and live there until we are able to move in the house. Hopefully before next winter. Hopefully!

The caravan is quite big - 5.3m long with about 10,5m2 of space with a toilet/shower, two rooms and a tiny kitchen. It was built in 1989 in Germany which means it is old and hopefully well built.

Also, as seen on the photos, it is wonderfully decorated with lace and a wholesome wooden colour all around. Not exactly my cup of tea, but luckily we can change that!

So instead of concentrating on the house we, at least for a while, remake the caravan instead and hope that this kind of hippie life will be more romantic and less stressful!