If It Works, It Works…
Touring for a living, I’m used to making things work. Often things aren’t ideal, but you make do with what you have. Anything that can’t be fixed with WD40 or duct tape isn’t worth fixing, right?
Living in Gomera and renovating a house here takes that to a WHOLE new level. I’m still not entirely sure whether I should be proud of the things I’ve done – is bodging a great life skill, or should I be slightly ashamed of the depths I’ve sunk to? The jury’s out on that one.
The thing is though, when you’re renovating a house with literally no budget left, you’ve got to make some decisions which, in a perfect world, wouldn’t need to be made. And if that results in a permanent fix, what’s the problem?
For all of you who actually understand DIY and are hanging your heads in horror at what I’ve been doing, I’m sorry. But if it works, it works, right?
Don’t have a shower tray? No problem! Just cut up two pieces of kitchen cabinet and use those instead. Not my idea – (it was like that when I got here, and it’s since been changed…) but still, a good life hack right.
Holes in the wall. When I first saw the walls, I had grand plans to get them plastered and beautifully straight, show-home style. Turns out plastering is EXPENSIVE. These walls are pretty awful – but has anybody told you that pushing Polyfilla and paint into cracks works nearly as well as plastering? If they did, they lied. But it certainly can marginally improve the look of a wall, and now I can pretend there are no holes in the wall. Genius!
When I moved in, I wondered why everything was coated in green gloss paint: the terrace, the walls, the doors, the window frames – even a rock in the garden. Well, I've figured it out – the green gloss paint was basically holding everything together. Turns out that stuff is pretty heavy duty – easily strong enough to keep rotting window frames from falling apart.
Need to get a door frame off the wall? Sure, you could unscrew all the painted over screws and spend hours of your life doing it neatly. Or, when it’s so old, wooden and rotten that it snaps easily, just pull/push/kick it off! Takes way less time.
When I finally got hot water plumbed in everywhere, I found out that the upstairs kitchen tap only had one pipe going into it. So, only cold water. I could change the tap, but that would require cutting out more space in the sink, and that seemed every level of complicated. So, I just switched the pipe so I now only get hot water. There’s no temperature control so I have to wash my dishes in scaldingly hot water and take a layer of skin off my fingers each time, but it’s infinitely better than having to wash them in the bathroom.
8 loads of washing after getting the electricity fixed enough to use the washing machine, it broke – frustrating. More washing clothes in buckets. But no fewer than three people told me that the ONLY sensible thing to do in this situation was to use the washing-machine door as a salad bowl. I’ve taken it one step further and I’m using it to hold my coffee capsules. Upcycling at its most glamorous finest, right?
I bought a super old car over here. Heading back from a dive one night, I drove back home only to be informed very kindly by the police that I had no working lights on the back of my car. Turns out it’s an electrical problem which will cost a fortune to fix. No problem! They simply wired the car differently, so now the lights are on all the time. The only issue is that every 27 minutes my car thinks it’s overheating (it’s not) so I have to turn the engine off then on again every 26 minutes to fool it . I also have to disconnect the battery every time I park, or the lights stay on. But hey, I can drive at night now.
When I first moved in, I’d be shaking my head in disbelief at the ridiculous things that had been done to this place over the years. But now, after living here and experiencing the difficulty of getting materials and tools, and dealing with the basic level of what’s been done before, I’m starting to understand. I pulled a doorframe off to find it was hollow and packed with newspaper. Obviously there was a lack of solid wood when they put the door in. I totally understand why they did it.
The more I do to this place, and the more I bodge and make do and use creative solutions, the more Gomeran I start to feel. An entirely welcome feeling!
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