Restoring a centuries old home in beautiful Alhama de Granada, Spain

Infos

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  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.).

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  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Projets artistiques

  Aide avec des éco-projets

  Jardinage

  Bricolage et construction

  Cuisine/repas pour la famille

  Aide à la maison

  Entretien général
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  Echange culturel et opportunités d'apprendre

  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.

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  Aide

  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, 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!

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  Langues

  Langues parlées
  Anglais: Courant
  Espagnol: Courant

  Cet hôte propose un échange linguistique
  Cet hôte a indiqué qu’il souhaitait faire partager sa propre langue ou en apprendre une nouvelle.
  Contactez-le pour en savoir plus.
  
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  Hébergement

  You will have your own space with a bed (or possibly an air mattress, depending on the number of Workawayers) - this might be a room in itself, or a comfortable space for you, your belongings, and most likely a chair and bedside table in a room shared by two Workawayers. Remember - roommate = friend for life! :)
  
  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.

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  Autres infos...

  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.

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  Informations complémentaires

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    Accès Internet

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    Accès Internet limité

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    Nous avons des animaux

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    Nous sommes fumeurs

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    Familles bienvenues

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  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Plus de 2

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