Building works..

With the house in disarray, we must get busy and get things sorted out. First up we decide to have a look around at laminate flooring, but it’s Saturday afternoon, so not much we can do. On the way back, we call in on Clare and Rec for a coffee. Before Christmas I’d been extolling the virtue of my Slow cooker to Clare, and so she’d asked Santa for one, and as luck would have it, her first experiment was bubbling away, filling the house with gorgeous smells as we entered.

They kindly asked us if we’d like to stay for dinner, so we nicked off for beers and wine and returned for a cosy night in theirs. The experiment was a great success, and we settled down in their warm front room, watching TV.

Next morning, we’d all arranged to meet at Yonca for Sunday brunch. Jan came along with David and Stuart, and with Pat and Chris we were nine, all seated around tables on the beach for the stunning breakfast. An ulterior motive for the gathering was to plan out the arrangements for Jan’s 50^th birthday party, which is on April 28^th. The theme is ‘gold ‘cause I’m old’ so we had a good brainstorm of what needed to be done, followed by the divvying up of tasks.

Clare, Rec, Iain and I were all pretty tired and hung over from our night before, so after breakfast we headed back and Rec bought some celeriac to make us soup. We dropped them home and after giving Iain a hair cut, spent a couple of hours reading on the balcony in the warm sun, before Rec phoned to say the soup was ready. We picked up some bread and headed over. The soup helped the hangovers, and later in the evening Rec followed this with a curry, which really did the trick.

Monday morning, and time to get to work sorting out the kitchen/salon jobs. We grabbed Adem, and the three of us sorted out the laminate flooring first. This will come from Izmir, rest for a couple of days in Fethiye to acclimatise and then (hopefully) fitting will start on Friday or Saturday. Next up, the doors. The boys had made an opening of 1.5m, and I’d originally wanted a pair of French doors, opening into the salon. Now this looked impractical, as the left hand door would foul the room door, and the right hand one would hit the woodburner. Iain suggested sliding doors were the only workable solution. I was not keen, so sat down and tried to think of an alternative. How about a each door being made up of two smaller doors, hinged in the middle. That way you could open the two centre doors, each folding back on the other halves if you wanted, or for a larger opening open the fully, the centre parts folding back against the walls at an angle. It was hard to visualise, so I made a prototype using an old business card. Great, this should work, so we all headed off to a carpenter to show him and see what he thought. Yep, this will be possible, so we arranged for him to come round at 4 to measure up and get started. This should be in in maybe a week or two he said.

It was lunch time now, so I made kebab’s all round for the three of us, before I headed off into town to meet Pat, Chris, David and Stuart to watch ‘The Departed’ at the cinema. Iain and Adem went off to sort out plaster or something, and while out ran into the flooring guy. He had a bit of free time, so he came back to have a look at the job. He measured up and found that it was more likely only 38 square meters needed, rather than the 50 odd we’d thought, so that will save us some cash. The carpenter came to measure the doors, and could now make a start on those.

Chris and Pat dropped me home after the film and came up to check out the work.

Adem had bought fresh fish that day from the market, so they invited us over for dinner, Ramazan and family were coming too. After a delicious meal, Nese suggested we call up Nesrettin and Eyup – who live across the road, to invite ourselves over for coffee. We had a lovely evening with them, coffee, then tea, then fruit. Handi has been learning to play the sass, so she went upstairs to Ramazan’s house and gave us a lovely recital. Before we left them, we agreed that Eyup would come over the next morning at 10am with his brother and give us a quote for the kitchen. They had been over before and arrived promptly on time with a CAD designed kitchen. After making a few alterations, we agreed to visit their workshop at 12 to look at door styles and granite. Adem was no where to be found, so we were on our own. Eyup’s brother, Sabat took us to a warehouse to look at door panels, and we had difficulty finding the exact colour we wanted. He then took us into town to show us some work he’d done at a local jewellers shop. The quality was excellent, but still not quite the right colour. Clare’s kitchen is very similar to what I want, so I suggested we call round and see if they were in and would let us show Sabat. No probs, so up we went and Rec made us all coffee while we inspected their kitchen. While there, Rec impressed on Sabat that we had lots of English friends who would see our kitchen, as well as a website where we would write and say if the work was good or no good, so make sure you do a good job! Next up was to check out the granite, so back to the Sanaiye (the industrial estate) to see what was available. Soon we found exactly what we were after, a dark black granite with small sparkly bits in it. We agreed a price and left the chap to order it in.

So, within a couple of days, wheels have been set in motion, and with a bit of luck all the work should be done and dusted within a few weeks, as they say round here - inshallah! (god willing!).