My parents’ little cottage needed some repairs since long ago. It has only two bedrooms, a small corridor between them, a bathroom and a kitchen/lounge.
IMHO the real value of the house lies on its location more than on the house itself.
I had already painted the bedrooms two month earlier. 
I was still enjoying my holidays in the South of Gran Canaria dealing with “the beasts” (my daughter and six of her cousins), when I decided that I was going to finish the inside painting of the house. In fact, the only rooms left to paint were the kitchen/lounge and the corridor, so it wouldn’t be difficult. My sister’s boyfriend, who enjoyed some days with us, told me he would be glad to help me out with the job.
We discussed how we were gonna do it and we found out that it would be probably better to stay the night as furniture had to be removed, baseboards, door frames, switches and light sockets, lamps and even some kitchen closets had to be covered with masking tape or with blankets to keep them paint free, so we arranged to carry out the job on the 24th and 25th September. We would leave on Saturday morning to be back on Sunday afternoon.
Last September 20th, Tuesday, I got a phone call from him. “Let me ask you something mate, are we going alone? I mean, no wife, no girlfriend, no kids coming? Just you and me…?”
I said “yes, unless you…… want to invite some other people to help us……”
He remained quiet for several seconds and with the voice of someone who is about to get 20 straight hours without children, wives or girlfriends, told me “look man, why don’t we leave on Friday afternoon instead? I finish work at 16:00, I can be at the door of your house at 16:30”
So last Friday at 16:35 we were heading to the supermarket to buy some food. While in there, I found out that my mate was buying mostly vegetables and just a piece of meat, a long piece but just one. He told me not to worry about it, “you won’t be hungry, I swear” . I picked up a bottle of Whisky, and 25 cans of beer and he took two bottles of wine from the shelves. Red and white.
We got there by 18:30. As soon as we placed what we had bought in the fridge or in the cupboards, we opened our first beer.
We did nothing on Friday apart from playing guitar. My mate had never used a guitar fx’s pedalboard before and I swear he enjoyed as a child playing along with backing tracks. As you might guess, booze played also a remarkable role in our playing. His “ability” to sing or to play any instrument out of tune……not from this world!
On Saturday we woke up at 8:00. We had breakfast and soon we started off with the covering part first and with the painting later on.
At 15:30 the kitchen/lounge, roof and corridor was finished. At 18:00, after sweeping, furniture was back at its original place and masking taped and blankets had been removed.
When we finished a fantastic dinner -my sister’s boyfriend is a great chef- we went downstairs heading to the garage, where we played guitar and bass guitar ‘till our fingertips “screamed” halt! and where we sung tracks as a pair of drunken guys. The house is quite isolated so there are not volume problems.
We enjoyed a lovely bunch of meals and aperitivos during the whole weekend.
I had always known that he was a good chef, -he’s been working in a Hotel School for years- but I had never had the occasion to check it out by myself through several continuous meals.
From gratin marrow, stuffed with onion marmalade and creamy cheese –I never thought this marmalade could exist- to boiled potatoes mixed with grilled green and red pepper, red hot pepper plus a superb and very tasty sauce.
From fried cheese with ground cumin to spread in bread, to “revueltos” of vegetables, garlic mushrooms and parsley. He cooked the meat in the oven over several sweet fig leaves we had picked up from the tree and added half a glass of white wine……
On Sunday by 15:30 we went back home
It was an awesome weekend.
By mid-September I had painted the shutters from the main entrance. This is the way they looked then
I had to sand all the wood before giving it two coats of paint.
The kitchen/lounge
The corridor
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