Restoring a centuries old home in a beautiful small Andalucian city, Spain

Details

• 

  Description

  Come help us transform a neglected old Spanish home into a beautiful spot for family and visiting artists!
  
  My husband and I, recently retired American teachers both, after having lived in Thailand and on the Pacific island of Saipan for 6 years, then at the entrance to Cape Cod in Massachusetts for the last 25 years, just bought a centuries-old home in the Arab Quarter of Alhama de Granada, a small, beautiful old city just west of Granada in southern Spain. The house had been shut up for several years and needed a through cleaning out and cosmetic touching-up. Now that that is mostly soon to be finished, we are looking for Workawayers to help us clean it up, do some interior painting, clean the previous artist owner's eclectic artwork and then figure out how to best display that, plus find places for what we have bought ourselves. There will also be some hard but rewarding garden tasks using hand tools (digging up some small planting areas, digging out a pit to install a water collection tank, etc.) if that's more to your liking!
  
  In the end we hope to have a beautiful vacation house to invite friends and family to come and visit, as well as hosting visiting artists in the first floor of the house. It will be a great space - two kitchens, three bedrooms/studios, three common rooms/areas, two gardens and a rooftop terrace, all housed inside thick walls several hundreds of years old, and overlooking the river gorge which borders the town to one side. Spectacular views! And tons of countryside walks to choose from, among olive and almond groves, along old rivers with Roman bridges spanning them, wildflowers all over in the spring, festivals in-town throughout the year.
  
  We hope to create a friendly and welcoming space for decades to come - want to come and be part of this transformation? We'd love to have your help!
  
  Please Note: For the months of April and May there will be a contractor finishing up work modernizing the house interior, so there may at times be some dust in the air from concrete and stone wall grinding activities (burying electrical lines, replacing lintels, etc.).

• 

  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Art Projects

  Help with Eco Projects

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Creating/ Cooking family meals

  Help around the house

  General Maintenance
• 

  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  You will see what life in a small Spanish city is like. Alhama has just under 6,000 people - mostly Spanish, but a fair number of Moroccan immigrants, and expats too. There are lots of festivals throughout the year, and a Sunday hiking club which goes on hikes in the nearby hills. We are about 45 minutes by car from Granada, and if we are going there on a supplies run we'd be happy to take you with us. Or, there are three daily buses into Granada, and you can go there to have a taste of its cathedral, fabulous Moorish Albayzin neighborhood, and of course, the world-famous Alhambra.
  
  We will treat you as one of our family, and you will get to see what it is like to restore an old Spanish home. Again, though, these are mostly cosmetic tasks - highly necessary, but not the rebuilding walls or putting in a new roof type work that is often shown in You Tube restoration videos.

• 

  Help

  So by now the major work of cleaning out the previous owners' possessions has been done. Most has either been donated, tossed, or stored away. By August the major renovation work should be finished. So the plan for August, then, is to sort through and clean the stored artwork; clean up after the dusty renovations; and tackle/beautify the garden, with plantings of wildflowers, cacti, and fruit trees. Also prepare for the future by stacking a few winters' worth of firewood, possibly building a small, rainwater-fed plunge pool, and installing lighting systems for the garden and terraces.
  
  Lastly, if you have any artistic skills, as time allows, maybe you can indulge in some of them to beautify the place? (Thinking murals, mosaics, paintings using the previous owners' oils and pastels.) Let us know if so!

• 

  Languages

  Languages spoken
  English: Fluent
  Spanish: Fluent

  This host offers a language exchange
  This host has indicated that they are interested in sharing their own language or learning a new language.
  You can contact them directly for more information.
• 

  Accommodation

  You will have your own room with a bed (possibly an air mattress, depending on the number of Workawayers).
  
  We share all meals (or, failing a sit-down meal, at least the food necessary to make your own - but we try to have at least one together meal a day) and cleanup, seven days a week (work is only five days, however). They will be hearty and restorative after a good day's work.
  
  Snacks and alcohol are up to you.

• 

  What else ...

  Hiking, shared car trips to local areas of interest (we are still getting to know the areas ourselves), many stores, bars and restaurants in the city within a 15 minute walk, a hot spring 3 km away, festivals throughout the year.

• 

  A little more information

  • 

    Internet access

  • 

    Limited internet access

  • 

    We have pets

  • 

    We are smokers

  • 

    Can host families

• 

  How many Workawayers can stay?

  More than two

• 

  Hours expected

  Maximum 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week

Feedback (3)