My house in Ano-Vathy, on the island of Samos

Update 2011 - preparing it for the first summer guests...

2011-08-21T19:24:00.000-07:00

From 2009 to 2011, a Finnish couple lived in the house, and during their stay they improved quite a lot - actually, that was how they paid the rent. When they left in April 2011, we needed to do a "makeover" to turn the house into a suitable holiday home.

The cherry on the cake certainly is the fantastic sun deck of 40m2 - covering the plot I bought in 2009 from my Greek neighbour Georgia, who was rather eager to sell. I tried to come across as not too eager to buy but I don't know if I succeeded... The bottom line is that with this terrace, we now have a free, "idiot-proof" view over Ano-Vathy, the northern Samos coastline and the bay of Vathy.

How it looked in 2004

2011-08-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

I bought the house in Ano-Vathy in August 2004. From 2009, it has been up for rent. Here you can see how it looked back then... at a first glance you'd think that it was all ready for use. As I was soon to discover, that was not quite the case...

The first impression was pretty good. What a nice romantic cottage!

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And inside it looked rather charming, if simple...

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The garden house.

2005 - Some first improvements

2006-10-27T02:10:00.000-07:00

In Spring 2005 I started renovating the house, or more precisely: while I was working in Brussels, I found a plumber to install a new bathroom in the garden house. This plumber knew of an electrician who renewed the electricity circuit, replacing the antique sockets and adding a few lightbulbs here and there:

The new bathroom actually replaced a toilet and a very primitive kitchen - remember the photo?

What was needed now was a new kitchen - and the best place for that was in the main house, on the ground floor. Fortunately I found Marc van Houten, a Dutch carpenter who now lives and works on Samos, sho did the job in the Summer of 2005. Before / After:

My sabbatical started in October 2005. Plenty of time now to come to Samos, and to start tearing down the plasterwork hidden behind those shiny green walls. A tough job, and a dusty one at that...

Meanwhile, some first curious guests came by, smelling the coffee...

The renovation in 2006

2006-10-26T01:50:00.000-07:00

During 2006, I tackled the main house. But first I had to deal with some setbacks: in the garden house, a wall had collapsed because of the pressure of the mountain it is built against... During the rain period, the ground had gotten heavier and heavier heavier and the pressure on the wall had become too much. Apart from that, it turned out that the roof in the main house was leaking seriously. So I decided for an 'extreme makeover': a new roof, a new floor and a complete doing up of the garden house, preventing more local disasters from happening.

The new roof came first. It was delivered with a delay of only 2 months, which, as it turns out, corresponds to the Samian phrase "as soon as possible". Mr P. had other things to do as well, or so it turned out. But the result was and is beautiful, and I have forgiven him since. My house is now one of the few left with a roof of original rooftiles, laid in the traditional "one up and one down" way:

Next was the new floor. Again, Marc provided the much-needed help, without delays. We didn't miss the opportunity to take a few pics of a house without floors...

So there it was, the new floor and the new stairs. Now we could start cementing and plastering the walls. Friends came by, who were all too happy to give us some expert and non-expert advice. The plastering would take longer than predicted: working as a tour guide, the swims, the summer heat... coupled to a near-total inexperience with this line of work. But little by little things started taking shape.

On 1 October 2006, with things only halfway finished, we decided to move into the house anyway. It did speed up the work, and anyway we had no choice. The weather was perfect for some serious manual work now, and my father came over as well, helping me out in many ways with a grandmasterly eye for detail. And as De Volkskrant wrote that week: "A fit old-timer never leaves his boss"!

The plastering had taken a lot of time, but was now nearing the end. Other jobs also got done, as the photos above show. With 7 more days before my scheduled flight to Norway, I finally had the opportunity to raise the roof of the garden house. Probably the toughest working week of my life, but what joy when the new roof was actually there...

2006-10-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

In January 2007, we attacked the garden house, literally... and by the way, the roof held it until now!

Mid-April 2007: getting there...

2006-10-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

Photos from the results of the april spring cleaning operation...

In May, the inside stone walls will be decently cemented... the stones will still b viible, but in between them, there will be whitish cement. Mr Pascal's deadline is 25 May!

2008: jobs around the house...

2006-10-09T10:14:00.000-07:00

A better kitchen and a floor of natural stone downstairs...

Slow progress, but beautiful progress...