By The Crazy Guy
The Crazy Guy, known by the Spanish locals as "El Loco", was a languages teacher, a school inspector and a translator and interpreter. Since retirement over 18 years ago he has also dabbled in journalism and blogging.
But what he really wanted to do when he was younger was to be a tradesman, eg. plumber, electrician, carpenter, bricklayer, tiler or painter and decorator. Over the years he’s had a go at all of these on an amateur, DIY basis with relative success.
Here’s the story of the houses that Jack – The Crazy Guy - built! Or helped to build…..
Photo courtesy of Karl Smallman
First steps
I first started doing bits and pieces of DIY when I was a poorly paid young teacher. My wife Jeryl and I bought our first house, a semi-detached in Walkden, Greater Manchester, for £11,000. A lot of money back then and the mortgage interest rate was around 16 per cent!
Unable to afford to employ professionals, I informed myself from books (no YouTube videos back then in the late 1970s) and tentatively did a bit of electrical work, plumbing and painting and decorating, aided and abetted by Jeryl. We were childless then, so no distractions.
After about three years we sold up and moved to our second house, in Thelwall, Warrington, not far from the infamous Thelwall Viaduct on the M6. A three-bed detached it cost us just £37,500, a huge amount in 1980.
Over the next 20 years, the house grew in size to become a four-bedroomed, two bath-roomed house with four reception rooms and a third WC, plus a garage and a large balcony overlooking the adjacent park.
Although builders did the main construction work, my DIY skills had developed so much that I was able to re-wire the whole house, convert the original garage into an extra lounge-cum-music room, turn the separate toilet and bathroom into an ensuite bathroom with new suite, install a shower, replace all the guttering and drainpipes and build two patios and a pergola. Not to mention wall-papering and painting throughout. I even built a tree house for my two kids.
Houses in Spain, Wales and Luxembourg
In the early 2000s Jeryl and I bought two properties in relatively quick succession in Ronda, Andalucia. The first, Piso Blanco, was a small flat that needed little doing to it, but the second, an end-terraced house, which we named Casa Blanca, was virtually a ruin.
Over the next couple of years, I re-wired it, replaced a collapsed floor, upgraded the kitchen, re-built the terrace and decorated throughout.
Then disaster struck, or should I say three disasters!
Redundancy, early retirement and divorce in quick succession, in 2005, saw me living with a new lady, Maude, a wido, in her beautiful cottage in Bryn-y-Maen, North Wales.
I did a few bits and pieces there to keep my hand in and then, when I took her to Ronda for a long weekend, Maude bought a small house there on the spur of the moment.
We called it El Rincón because it was tucked away in a corner. It needed a lot of work, which I happily took on. Maude was still working full time in the UK, but I was retired so spent months in Ronda re-wiring, building a new bathroom, tiling floors and creating a rather delightful, terraced garden at the rear of the house. A good lick of paint and El Rincón was finished.
The end of the relationship with Maude put paid to my DIY activities for a couple of years, until an old university friend, Jac, who lives in Luxembourg, invited me to spend the summer of 2008 in the Grand Duchy helping her daughter and son-in-law renovate an old house they’d bought there.
That was great fun and I developed some new skills, as building practices there differ significantly from the ones I had become familiar with in the UK.
Back to Warrington
After that busy but enjoyable summer of 2008 I was foot-loose and fancy-free again, so headed off to Ronda to stay in Piso Blanco for a few days, prior to moving into a house in Latchford, Warrington, which I’d bought with the proceeds from the sale of Casa Blanca, the Ronda house I’d done up a few years before.
The Warrington house was a real bargain. Tunstall Villa, as the “new” house in Latchford was named, was a “do-er up-er”. A Victorian detached villa, rather down on its luck, it had the potential to be a great house again. It only cost me £119,000.
Still “unemployed” - by this time I’d been retired for three years - I had plenty of time on my hands, so I set about the renovation. Over many months I created a delightful winter garden, renovated the rear internal area to provide a WC and laundry room, re-decorated throughout, and then, after two and a half years ….. I sold it!
Why on earth …..?
Back to Andalucia
Well, on that visit to Ronda in September 2008 that I mentioned earlier, I’d met a lady I nicknamed the “Meter Maid”! Yes, you guessed it, her name is Rita. We dated in Spain, the UK and Germany, where she is from, and quickly fell in love.
I immigrated to Spain at the end of that year to live with Rita in her lovely village house, Casa Rita, in Montejaque. In 2010 we married.
The DIY didn’t stop, however! I built a kitchenette in a bedroom in Casa Rita, that we set up as a B & B, and handled all the maintenance work there.
Both having committed to living in Spain, we needed a house that better met the needs of our respective families, eg her disabled grandson, my ailing mother. So, I sold Tunstall Villa in Latchford and we used the money from the sale to buy our dream house in the campo just outside Ronda.
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That house is known as Villa Indiana. That all happened in 2011, the year after we “jumped the broom” and we still live there after 13 years of married life.
The DIY and gardening have continued, of course, although, as I get older, I rely a bit more on local tradesmen to keep on top of things.
In 2019 I decided to sell Piso Blanco in Ronda after 18 years’ ownership. We had been using it as a holiday rental, but all of a sudden the bookings started to dry up, so it had to go.
In October 2020, I used some of the money from that sale to buy a charming old house in Montejaque, where we had previously lived. I needed a project again and so I am currently restoring it to its former glory.
To be sure, I’m 73 now but the mind is still willing even if the flesh is weak. With the help of professionals, Casa Real is currently being re-configured and re-wired, prior to re-plastering, installing a new bathroom and extending the roof terrace. Then it will have a lick of paint prior to being offered as a vivienda rural to tourists who, since the Covid-19 lockdowns, are travelling again.
This winter I am targeting the growing market for digital nomads. I’ve created two fully equipped workspaces for people who fancy working remotely. It’s a burgeoning trend. The Spanish government has even created a special visa and offered tax breaks to encourage more of these remote workers to choose Spain.
At my age maybe I should just hang up my DIY boots! But then this happened …..
A Victorian Pile in Hastings
In 2021, my son Tom and his wife Su, both actors, decided they needed a better quality of life before they started a family. So, they moved from London to the Sussex coast, to Hastings, where Su is from.
So, in early 2022 I spent a week in Hastings helping Tom with the renovation of a large, neglected Victorian terraced house which the couple had bought. By this time they had a son, Wilbur.
In the house, the main job was to replumb the place and strip out the century-old lead pipework, but we also did a lot of drylining of walls ready for plastering and I made a garden gate out of a recycled pallet.
Then Tom and Su had their second child, Buckley, a brother for Wilbur, so the building work needed to be put on hold.
I’m currently waiting for the call to go and help with painting and decorating and the installation of a new bathroom.
Watch this space!
© The Crazy Guy
Further reading:
The Building History of a 72-year-old DIY Fan (eyeonspain.com)
CASA MONTEJAQUE (a1-holidays.net)
Casa Rita Holiday Rental Montejaque - Secret Serrania de Ronda
DIGITAL NOMADS - Help me, Ronda (help-me-ronda.com)
Photographs:
Karl Smallman, www.secretserrania.com
Paul Whitelock, www.help-me-ronda.com
Note: This article is an adaptation and an updating of an original article written in 2000.
Tags: Casa Blanca, Casa Montejaque, Casa Real, Casa Rita, Crazy Guy, digital nomads, DIY, El Loco, Hastings, Latchford, Luxembourg, Piso Blanco Rincon, Ronda, Thelwall, Tunstall Villa, Victorian pile, Villa Indiana, Walkden, Warrington