While Jorge, the iron smith, was busy with the steel gurdles, we continued with getting the house ready
for rebuilding. The beautiful and old staircase looked still good and we did think it would “survive”, but
then it turned out to be rotten as well. The roof we did not think of renewing either. Onde day Paco asked
me to climb up and check the ridge of the roof, it had a crack, but that could have been fixed. Paco,
though, gave us 3, at the most 4 years, before the roof would leak!! So now we actually did need to
rebuild the whole house!
Just as in the other two houses, the holiday home Orgiva La Rueda and the holiday rental Andalucia La
Cueva, we tried to use mainly local building and decoration materials. This time it was more difficult.
During the big crisis, many of the handicraft firms went out of business, therefore it was not easy to find
beautiful, handmade tiles for the kitchen and bathrooms. The 2 brothers of the ceramic factory, north of
Granada, were still open, but only made to order. In the end they made most of our tiles and ceramic
decoration by hand. We were able to design some of the patterns on the tiles and they even made the sinks
in the bathrooms, matching the tiles!
Even finding “our” pool tiles, that we used in our other pools, turned out to be rather tricky this time!
Our neighbour was still able to make us 600m of Zoga ( the esparto string), for the binding of the reeds
used for the ceilings – before he sadly died.
This time we also installed floor heating, with a biomass boiler that can be fed with olive stones or
almond shells or pellets. Of course in the livingroom we put a wood fed chimney. Onto the roof we put
solar panels for the hot water.
Paco recommended a new carpenter, who made everything to do with wood by hand, including all the furniture!
In the garden we created a pool , heatable this time with a heat pump. We integrated a bench under which
we put air jets, in order to have a type of jacuzzi within the pool – just like in our holiday rental in
Andalucia La Cueva.
Our new holiday home in Orgiva El Garzopo is very suitable for a family holiday in Granada or a hiking
holidayin the Alpujarras, or a holiday for two in Orgiva or even a long term rental in Andalucia.
