Not sure if anyone is interested but I have started a new project ...I can delete if there's no interest as its not a timber construction.....or even a build as such, more of a large restoration and improvement project

History .........the oilfield having used me up and spat me out onto the unemployment line last year meant we had to make some decisions.....

The wife was fed up with living in the UK...me could not see a happy future doing a 9-5 boring job in my home town,
we can't live in the Colorado house we built as we don't have green cards so after thinking long and hard we decided that with no good work being around for the immediate future or until the oil price rises again we decided to make a large jump.

We finished the work on my UK house, so that we could rent it, bought a large van added some windows and did a rapid cheap camper build from stuff I had in my garage and set off from the UK at the beginning of December.

The idea was to find a cheap country house in Spain plant some food, get chickens and live a low income life in Spain off of the rental income from the house in the UK.

Here's a few taster pics to see if anyone is interested in our new project and semi retirement is Spain..

Van picked up, loaded bike for the drive home


some left over insulation from my shed project and some ply that I was going to use in my man shed.....into we decided to move countries !



The day we left the UK in my 1 week camper build----



Installed the family

Set sail for Spain


Spent some cool nights in the Pyranian mountains

After 6 weeks travelling around southern spain we arrived in the Xalon valley area and accidently found a small village pub with a live band on, enjoyed a few hours, and then a few more, slept in the village and then in the morning noted a small finca on the hill above the village that we'd seen for sale a while back but was out of our budget........a quick internet check showed they'd just dropped the price to close to our budget...so we did a walk by, went to see the realtor and a few weeks later it was ours !

Lets try these photos.....
http://www.imagebam.com/image/9f5d3f556232943
<a href="http://www.imagebam.com/image/1f72ff556232983" target="_blank"></a>

Very interesting. Best of good fortune. I hope to follow.  Too bad this post coincides with photobuckets new policy. I'll be looking for a new photo host too.

That's a beautiful place.

photobucket was almost unusable yesterday too, with pop up adverts every minute obscuring the screen.....will find another provider and redu the links

I own a couple of websites, it's really pretty cheap, then put my pics, documents, calcs, whatever, on them for storage/hosting. It avoids some ethically challenged bad actor like Photobucket from holding you hostage later. They have effectively just downed the photos on thousands of forums, lack of foresight on the forums part but basically extortion on theirs.

mmmm been trying to get another hoster ...not much luck...used to use facebook aswell but that looks to locked too





yep facebook I used to be able to link too .....not anymore

Well I'm not sure what worked as I thought I'd copied one link........

Built a quick camping van
Left the UK
Travelled by boat and overland to Spain with the family
Bought a Urban Finca - or small farm next to a village
Got snowed in - first time since 1980ish they had snow in the village
Built a chicken shed
Installed chickens into shed
Got 2 goats Pepe and paco to clean up the property- 4 days after arriving they decided to leave our farm and reside up on the mountain above us....still hear the odd bleat but officially wild now
Project 2 was a sun shade, patio tiles were laid on screed so had to dig down to bigger rocks
Got some chaps up from the village to help me move the big beams
Chicken moved in before I'd finished putting in the temporary screws
Sun shade frame work done.......

Maybe another day will have time to work out how to redu this properly if it does not disappear in the next 24hrs !

Very cool, you certainly have made lemonade 
That is one nice chickenhouse, and one nice house, congrats on the find.

I think imgbox has a slight learning curve. I have looked at it and am trying it out too. 

I liked Spain when I traveled there. Is that south of valencia?  ... Nothing like having to reinvent oneself. Best of fortune to you all.

Great looking place.  Thanks for sharing.  I have always wanted to go to Spain. 

Keep the posts and pictures coming, I'm very interested and think it fits in here. Loved your build in Colorado. I was there for 4 years (in Parker) and moved back to Ohio (originally from there) for work just last November. Will be heading back to Woodland Park, CO in a few weeks for my daughter's wedding (both my children stayed in Colorado they loved it so much). Same company both times, moved there and back both for work. My ancestry is mainly Italian, and I'd love to do the same thing you are doing in the countryside in Italy. However, it is not very easy for an American to get Italian citizenship to live there long term without larger sums of cash. Brexit aside, I assume this was something very easy for you to do because of the EU rules?

Yes we are south of Valencia, around an hour to the outskirts on the motorway, we are close to Denia but in the mountains behind

Brixit wise yes being from an EU country getting residency here was easy......still working on the wife though as she's Venezuelan !

Yep most countries do reciprocal laws for residence etc,,,ie for me being a brit America is a no go, until my daughter born in California can sponsor us.....when she's 21.......while to wait on that one, shes only 9 right now.

My Colorado build may shortly be up for sale - we are discussing what we want to do going forward - flights are costly from here and our present income won't cover them easily.

So if people are interested I'll keep posting , have a bunch of projects that need doing, along side planting grape vines and local fruit trees, alongside trying to get the chickens to live together happily, we have 4 from a week old and got another 4 ready for laying.....seeming the chickens are racist and similar colours stick together, the larger ones pick on the small ones, who can presently just fit through the mesh of the chicken run.....ex the goat pen !

My daughter has 6 chickens and a duck she got as babies this year and her fiancé just finished building the coop and moved them outside a few weeks ago. Until then, they were kept indoors as they were too small and it was colder out. The ducks are hilarious, she has a children's wading pool for them to swim in.

On a side note, sent you a PM.