Tag: home

Worth it

~ Maggie ~ 3 Comments

So… the cute little ruin. I feel kind of guilty that I left you all hanging at that post in February (February? Really? Wow…), but I’ve been having a hard time to decide what I do and don’t want to post on the internet. But I decided to go ahead and see what feels comfortable.

We went back by the end of May and spent four weeks working on it. I spent a few days cleaning the kitchen first. Yes, days. That kitchen was so filthy!. It still doesn’t look like much, but it is at a level where I dare to use it.

And then the rest of my time was spent cleaning out closets, the pantry, the cellar and the attic. The previous owner inhereted it from an old friend, initially thought he would clean out and restore the house to rent it out, but gave up on it after 20 loads of trash. His way of cleaning stuff out was very random, though and I also think he had people “take whatever they wanted”. There was not much that could be salvaged. Most of what I found was trash. I did donate 60 canning jars (kept 20 for myself) and some small stuff, but I have been to the recycling station so often (12 times in 4 weeks) that the guys there started to recognize me.

I also (more or less) stripped the bedroom, so that we could sleep there. Driving 90 minutes to get there and 90 minutes back to the vacation cabin daily seemed doable at first, but it wasn’t. So we camped out in the house a few nights in a row and then went back to rest. The blue plastic is to keep the dust coming down from from the roof and attic away from the bed. Properly finished ceilings will have to wait until T. has rewired the house (since this way he can easily reach and add pipes).

Meanwhile, T. worked on the west wall. This side looked the worst and it gets the most rain and wind in autumn and winter. This is the before:

and this is the after:

I look at this picture to imagine how the whole house will look eventually. It’s a lot of work, but it will be worth it.

Then (by the end of June) we had to go back to Curaçao.

We returned in September, but we weren’t as productive then. I pulled something in my back the first week, so I spent most of my time sitting down and T. was very tired. We did put windows in that west wall though (where the blue tarp is in the picture above).

and we replaced the window in the back (where our bedroom is).

You can’t really see it in the picture, but the wood was so rotten, especially the lower part, that the glass actually had slided down an inch. It was so much warmer after we installed the new (HR+++ glass) window!

T. also build a simple veranda in the back (to keep that wall dry and to be able to have a dry space to saw and stain wood from now on), but I don’t have pictures of it. We finished it in a hurry, because our time in the Netherlands was up.

We are flying back to the Netherlands end of November, but we are not planning to work on the house. It will be too cold and wet (winter in the Netherlands is mostly rain). We do plan on spending the whole of next summer in the Netherlands and we hope to be able to finish the walls and windows then.

We have been feeling like we bit off more than we could chew more than once, but in the end it will all work out. It is going to be a beautiful and comfortable little house.

A cute little ruin indeed

~ Maggie ~ 6 Comments

When I first wrote about our new house in The Netherlands, I called it a cute little ruin. We’ve now seen it with our own eyes and well, I wasn’t wrong about that. We are convinced we can save it though. It just needs some work, and since we’re on a budget, it needs a lot of work from us.

Before the next winter starts, we need to replace all the single pane windows and the rotting frames. We have to repair, insulate and plaster the outside walls. The roof is old and wonky, but the seller assured us he repaired the leaking that was visible in one of the bedrooms, so that can wait. We are focusing on the outside for now, partly because we need to, but also partly because we want to please the neighbors. It is a bit of an eyesore in that street right now.
But if we have time, we also want to install central heating as soon as possible, to avoid high gas bills and to dry the house.

The first picture is the back. The other picture is part of the front. They covered the crumbling wall with wood, but the wood isn’t in the best condition either. We’re going to remove the wood and repair, insulate, and plaster the walls. We’re not sure yet if we’re going to be able to bring it back to the original design – they removed two small windows that were above the ones in the picture and altered the roofline. It used to have a half-hipped roof (like this), but now it’s a triangle, like the back. I would like to restore the original, but we have to be mindful of the budget.

The westside wall is cracked. I didn’t take a good picture, but here’s the one the realtor took last summer.

The man who lives across the street told us that they filled up a waterbasin that used to be next to the house, but didn’t press it down well enough. The wall sank because of that, but it has been stable for decades. That explains why the eastside is perfectly more or less straight. We think we can make it look much better if we make sure the new windows are straight, plaster the whole wall (after repairing and insulating) and maybe do a bit of tinkering to straighten the roofline.

T. wants to replace the roof completely (those old rooftiles are cute, but new ones are better for insulation), make it stronger and install (lots of) solar panels. But before we can do that, he needs to rewire the whole house (luckily he can do that himself).

So yeah, we’ve got our work cut out for us, but we don’t care. We’ve done it before and we are both in love with that little house. We were kind of sad to leave it behind, but we had to get back to the island (T. had some business things to take care of and our daughter will be visiting in a few weeks). We hope to be back in May to start working on it.

What about the inside, you’re asking? Oh my… Let’s talk about that in another post 😉

The beauty of where I am right now

~ Maggie ~ 7 Comments

Last week we put in an offer on a house in The Netherlands. I know… I didn’t see that coming either. T. found this cute little ruin in the far North East of the country and when he hesitantly showed it to me (I’ve declared many times that I’m done buying fixer uppers) I instantly fell in love with it.

Sadly, they were already talking with other buyers, who lost their chain condition (thanks to our offer – sorry, guys!), but still want to buy it. So I have to let go of the dreams I already spun around it.

I try so hard to see Curaçao as my home. I am very careful not to call the Netherlands home or even my home country, because I am living here, by my own choice. And I used to love it. And yes, the island will always have a special place in my heart. I will never regret the years we spent here.

But something changed. I feel lost. I feel uprooted. And I want to move back. Back home to the Netherlands.

There. I said it. Not that it will change anything.

Moving back isn’t even a real option, unless we find another cute little ruin in the middle of nowhere within our very low budget. House prices in The Netherlands are insane (as they are in many parts of the world, but not on Curaçao). Average prices went from 287.000 in 2018 to 483.000 in 2024. We had some “what if” scenarios calculated and taken care of before we left, but we never expected prices to grow exponentially. We don’t have the money to buy a normal priced house there.

T. really doesn’t want to move back either, and it would be very bad for his health to live there permanently again. He just wanted to use that house the way we use the cabin (for visits), and to have the option to move back if it turns out it’s necessary (in case the “what ifs” happen). In his vision we would still live on Curaçao as much as possible, even if we made the official move back.

But me? I started thinking things like “I’m going home!” Not good. Not good at all.

So I have another resolution for this year. I’m going to make an active effort to figure this out and reconnect to this island, my home and the land.

The best way to do that? I don’t know. But I do know gardening always makes me feel better. So since today is a cold day (it’s only 25 degrees Celsius – 75 F), I decided to get some work done in the garden. My body needs to start moving again (after being sick for a while) and the garden needs some (ahem) attention.

Although moving my body and doing a bit of work in the garden did help lift my mood a bit (no afters yet, it’s still a mess, but I’m exhausted now), I think I also need to focus on the beauty. Because one of my problems (I realized this while working) is that lately the garden has been just another big task that will never get completed. It should be something that makes me happy. So here are some close ups of flowers. Because there is so much beauty where I am right now.