Soldato
Definitely agree with you about the pool cover. They look ugly as well, and for me at least part of the point of having a pool is to make the garden look nice.
Relocation to Spain Experience
- Thread starter Martynt74
- Start date
Definitely agree with you about the pool cover. They look ugly as well, and for me at least part of the point of having a pool is to make the garden look nice.
Yeah, i was eyeing up one of the ones which is electric and recessed into the ground, which actually look pretty nice as long as you spec them during the build phase to avoid the big ugly roller. Then got quoted €15k....
The main reason to get one was due to looking to heat the pool, but then i discovered you can only heat to a 5c differential to the air generally without excessive cost. So during winter when the water temp is 8c, you'd only get it to 13c which is still too cold really to want to do anything.
Also, i think to avoid too much cross posting. I'll try and keep anything house specific to the build thread in Home and Garden. Doesn't make sense to post the same thing twice. I'll try and stick general updates in here.
Friday we're leaving my parents place and moving into the new rental. My daughters cat will be here on Sunday which my wife is beyond excited about. Her mum is coming out today to stay with us too. It's a shame she couldn't have come to the previous rental as she'd have loved that place.
It's going to be an interesting drive back, because we came up here in both the Kia and the Jeep which were full of stuff, but since the Jeep is now broken at a local garage, we're down to 1 car, whilst also now having 3 adults and a dog to carry, which means almost no space for any belongings!
Friday we're leaving my parents place and moving into the new rental. My daughters cat will be here on Sunday which my wife is beyond excited about. Her mum is coming out today to stay with us too. It's a shame she couldn't have come to the previous rental as she'd have loved that place.
It's going to be an interesting drive back, because we came up here in both the Kia and the Jeep which were full of stuff, but since the Jeep is now broken at a local garage, we're down to 1 car, whilst also now having 3 adults and a dog to carry, which means almost no space for any belongings!
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Moved into the new rental on Friday. Man it's absolutely freezing. It's on the "wrong" side of the hill. So the sun doesn't catch it until late, and then because it's an urbanisation and quite steep, the house behind it up the hill blocks a lot of sun too. As such the house is shaded a lot. Probably excellent in the summer, but it just isn't warming up at all. It's currently 11C and whilst the outside temp warms up a bit throughout the day this house still feels very cold. We're overloading on calor gas heaters and trying to balance electric heaters with tripping the electric. I've just told my wife that since this place is cheap we should make it as warm and comfortable as possible and if electric bill is crazy then so be it. Should only be for the next month, and then hopefully it'll warm up. It's not been as bad as days have gone on, so maybe the shell of the house is starting to retain some heat rather than it just being sucked outside. Not sure if physics backs that up, but it feels like it!
The house itself is also relatively small. Not proper small, but smaller than the previous place and as it's their holiday home rather than a proper rental the cupboards are full of their stuff leaving not much for ours, and given we have no other house, we have a lot of stuff! We've also got my mother in law staying, so the 3rd bedroom which could've been a dumping place is being used. As such my office looks like one of those hoarders tv shows!
In good news, the cat has arrived. My wife is therefore very happy. Although i've no idea what my mate was feeding it as it's proper fat!
We're still hoping that the other rental opportunity will happen. They've given it to the end of March to sell it and then they're moving out anyway, so will accept a rental. It's a much bigger house/plot with more outside space and therefore much more "us". We'd also then be settled right up to the point of moving into our house which would be great as it's currently in my mind we need to move out of here at the end of August and at the moment i've no idea how long we'll need a rental for.
The house itself is also relatively small. Not proper small, but smaller than the previous place and as it's their holiday home rather than a proper rental the cupboards are full of their stuff leaving not much for ours, and given we have no other house, we have a lot of stuff! We've also got my mother in law staying, so the 3rd bedroom which could've been a dumping place is being used. As such my office looks like one of those hoarders tv shows!
In good news, the cat has arrived. My wife is therefore very happy. Although i've no idea what my mate was feeding it as it's proper fat!
We're still hoping that the other rental opportunity will happen. They've given it to the end of March to sell it and then they're moving out anyway, so will accept a rental. It's a much bigger house/plot with more outside space and therefore much more "us". We'd also then be settled right up to the point of moving into our house which would be great as it's currently in my mind we need to move out of here at the end of August and at the moment i've no idea how long we'll need a rental for.
Yeah, we've got a storage unit in the local town where we've bought the plot. It's around 20m2 and has some space left still. The main issue being most of what we have here is either needed on a daily basis or clothes/fabrics which my wife doesn't want in the storage unit as it's more of a run down old building which the guy has crudely built walls to separate off into storage units!
I've ordered some tarp to be able to cover bikes/some outdoor things as they're all in the house at the moment too which isn't ideal!
Missus thinks our Belgium neighbours in Spain are Hitler fanatics , went over to there house which is about a mile away (actually our closest neighbour) had dinner and when we got home she said did I notice the deaths head motifs on the cutlery and Hitlers portrait on the wall.
Always something different over here, lovely dinner though.
Always something different over here, lovely dinner though.
Haha hopefully we have no neighbours like that, although entertaining at least.
Think it was actually a picture of Franco he liked the old hitler tash , would make more sense as the Begiums relatives where carlists in the 40's
Man, had a real panic this morning!
After paying someone to submit my residency application due to issues i was having myself, i still hadn't heard anything and when logging into the online portal i couldn't see anything. There was no way it should take this long and so i was concerned they hadn't submitted it.
Today i chased again and got a response "James will call you shortly as there's an issue"
Started freaking out a bit, i'm working here (still not sure if that's legit or not!), have paid around £100k to start the house build and generally settled my life here, and the thought of issues and having to leave because i've been here for 6 months without an application in process was concerning.
Got the call. Seems the application they had made wasn't processed because i already had 2 prior applications and i couldn't have 3. Seems that the idiot in the local town hall didn't add my reference number when submitting the additional documents. This explains why i got my original application closed. What he'd actually done was create a second application. Since i was only uploading the "additional" documents, his application was then also missing a lot of paperwork but i never got a letter telling me about this.
They've now agreed to close the second application and re-open the original. My marriage certificate is now out of date and so there's a good chance i'm going to have to spend £200 getting another one and then translating/getting it apostilled
After paying someone to submit my residency application due to issues i was having myself, i still hadn't heard anything and when logging into the online portal i couldn't see anything. There was no way it should take this long and so i was concerned they hadn't submitted it.
Today i chased again and got a response "James will call you shortly as there's an issue"
Started freaking out a bit, i'm working here (still not sure if that's legit or not!), have paid around £100k to start the house build and generally settled my life here, and the thought of issues and having to leave because i've been here for 6 months without an application in process was concerning.
Got the call. Seems the application they had made wasn't processed because i already had 2 prior applications and i couldn't have 3. Seems that the idiot in the local town hall didn't add my reference number when submitting the additional documents. This explains why i got my original application closed. What he'd actually done was create a second application. Since i was only uploading the "additional" documents, his application was then also missing a lot of paperwork but i never got a letter telling me about this.
They've now agreed to close the second application and re-open the original. My marriage certificate is now out of date and so there's a good chance i'm going to have to spend £200 getting another one and then translating/getting it apostilled
I'm led to believe the bureaucracy is boss level
Something was easy!!!!!
Following a payrise (although my boss converted GBP to EUR at 1.15 which is a rubbish FX rate!) it takes me beyond the point where i'm just on the cusp of where the "Beckham Law" becomes beneficial and i'm now over the threshold and it lasts for 6 years so should continue to take advantage over the next 6 years pay rises.
The Spanish company doing the payroll wanted €200 for an "analysis" and €300 for applying. I've just done it in around 20 minutes
For clarification for anyone not knowing. The Becklam Law is a bit of a tax dodge where instead of a sliding scale up to 47% you get taxed at a flat rate of 24% up to €600k at which point you pay 47% over that. It also only means that earnings in Spain are taxed rather than worldwide earnings as per normal Tax resident. It's designed to attract skilled foreign workers to Spain and was (as the name implies) named after David Beckham who argued against being taxed high amounts in Spain on his global imaging rights. It's since been amended to exclude sportsmen. There's a point around the mid €50k range where you cross over beyond 24% on the normal scale (no personal allowance here).
I was always close and was tempted to register anyway just because i hoped at some point it'd become beneficial and i'd just take the hit early on where i'd be paying slightly more tax, but no need now)
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Whoop, lifes almost getting easier...
I've been trying for ages to get an appointment for my wifes driving licence exchange. I was close to paying someone to just do it for me, but spoke to the company who are doing my residency and they suggested trying at 9am, and sure enough. This morning there were loads of appointments available for Tuesday
It's a bit different here, as a licence only lasts a short amount of time, and to renew you have to have a small medical to check you're capable. It's easy enough, a sight and hearing test, but then you have to do an activity to judge perception and also one where you have a curser moving along between 2 lines, and you have a left and right control and you have to avoid the sides. The computer that you do this on is straight out of the 80's
Also amusing is that this is a picture of the doctors office where you do the test. The waiting area was full of big chunky wooden furniture and genuinely felt like you were back in time 100 years. Pretty sure this is a real skull!
Also, confirmed that planning permission went in last night so now the waiting game begins.
I've been trying for ages to get an appointment for my wifes driving licence exchange. I was close to paying someone to just do it for me, but spoke to the company who are doing my residency and they suggested trying at 9am, and sure enough. This morning there were loads of appointments available for Tuesday
It's a bit different here, as a licence only lasts a short amount of time, and to renew you have to have a small medical to check you're capable. It's easy enough, a sight and hearing test, but then you have to do an activity to judge perception and also one where you have a curser moving along between 2 lines, and you have a left and right control and you have to avoid the sides. The computer that you do this on is straight out of the 80's
Also amusing is that this is a picture of the doctors office where you do the test. The waiting area was full of big chunky wooden furniture and genuinely felt like you were back in time 100 years. Pretty sure this is a real skull!
Also, confirmed that planning permission went in last night so now the waiting game begins.
Man of Honour
I had to do an equally bizarre and rudimentary medical here for the same reason, in an equally old fashioned doctor's surgery (this "surgery" was actually just a single converted room in his apartment - all very odd)Whoop, lifes almost getting easier...
I've been trying for ages to get an appointment for my wifes driving licence exchange. I was close to paying someone to just do it for me, but spoke to the company who are doing my residency and they suggested trying at 9am, and sure enough. This morning there were loads of appointments available for Tuesday
It's a bit different here, as a licence only lasts a short amount of time, and to renew you have to have a small medical to check you're capable. It's easy enough, a sight and hearing test, but then you have to do an activity to judge perception and also one where you have a curser moving along between 2 lines, and you have a left and right control and you have to avoid the sides. The computer that you do this on is straight out of the 80's
Also amusing is that this is a picture of the doctors office where you do the test. The waiting area was full of big chunky wooden furniture and genuinely felt like you were back in time 100 years. Pretty sure this is a real skull!
Also, confirmed that planning permission went in last night so now the waiting game begins.
Haha at least this had an actual waiting room!
Absolute money spinner though. €45 per test which took <10 minutes and he had a full waiting room!
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Soldato
Nothing to add other than I’m really enjoying reading!
Just back from viewing another rental. This one is available indefinately. The couple were trying to sell but need to sort some legal paperwork first. They've already bought a flat down south as they're downsizing and so it's somewhere we can properly settle into and feel at home until our house is built.
It'll be perfect for us, 4 bedrooms with a big lounge/kitchen so can use one bedroom as storage to save cash on our storage unit. There's a great pool/outside area. Outdoor kitchen and loads of covered parking to work on the Jeep and keep it covered when the roof is off.
They move out the 3rd May so that works nicely for us, although we'd have preferred sooner!
It'll be perfect for us, 4 bedrooms with a big lounge/kitchen so can use one bedroom as storage to save cash on our storage unit. There's a great pool/outside area. Outdoor kitchen and loads of covered parking to work on the Jeep and keep it covered when the roof is off.
They move out the 3rd May so that works nicely for us, although we'd have preferred sooner!
Feeling relieved about deciding to buy all 3 plots of land too.
Met the agent before the rental and he said he’d had a call from another agent with a client who were desperate to buy the land. Since no building has yet started they had assumed it was still available.
When he said he’d sold it they asked which plot and when he said all of it they started asking whether we’d sell one and when he told them he didn’t think we’d be interested they insisted he at least ask!
Whilst the plan was always to include an "agreement" to give us refusal on the additional plots should we have only bought what we wanted, i imagine it would've been easy to sell to someone else who would likely have paid a higher price.
Met the agent before the rental and he said he’d had a call from another agent with a client who were desperate to buy the land. Since no building has yet started they had assumed it was still available.
When he said he’d sold it they asked which plot and when he said all of it they started asking whether we’d sell one and when he told them he didn’t think we’d be interested they insisted he at least ask!
Whilst the plan was always to include an "agreement" to give us refusal on the additional plots should we have only bought what we wanted, i imagine it would've been easy to sell to someone else who would likely have paid a higher price.
Soldato
How are the kids coping with the change? And how is the Spanish coming on?
Kids are all back in the UK. The youngest is 22 and so due to Brexit couldn't come with us, but i'm not sure she'd have really wanted to anyway. She'd have been reduced to bar/restaurant work in all reality, and we've not moved to a touristy area where there's loads of English speaking people so she'd have been quite isolated.
They're all doing well back in the UK. Luckily with facetime/whatsapp it's just as easy to keep in touch and if anything i'd say my wifes relationship with her daughter is better as if anything her daughter rings to chat a few times a week now rather than only getting in touch when she wants something or shouting when living at home.
Spanish is nowhere near where i'd hoped. I can get by in most situations, but i'm still in that kind of simple phrase/question stage rather than being conversational at all. I think i was probably a little naive in thinking that immersion would help with the listening side, but i'm still really struggling on that and haven't put in anywhere near the amount of work i should have. I think with the 6 months of stress of trying to sort residency (mine still not done) and all other paperwork and then looking for a house or sorting rentals. I tell myself things should now calm down and i'll dedicate time each day but honestly think i'm fooling myself on that. I've posted in other threads but general motivation for other things i want to do (Cycling/Running/Weight Loss) seems to have been lacking, and putting in time to learn Spanish has fallen in with that.