Eight Unexpected Benefits Of Living In A Derelict Mansion
we bought a ~111 year old abandoned house in Portugal and now it owns us
Our property in Belas Portugal is five acres and four houses and a billion and one projects to make it all liveable. It’s been a year now and there is a lot of progress but sometimes it’s hard to see.
You must feel like Sisyphus rolling a boulder uphill, a friend said. More like Sisyphus rolling five different boulders up five different hills, I told her. Running between each to make sure none of them loses progress.
For now we live in the biggest house on the property, aka the palaceta, aka Brokedown Palace. I was scared of it when we first moved in - it was dusty and musty and there is old water damage and the air hadn’t been breathed for a very long time. Ancient lace curtains sticky with dust hung at the upstairs windows, you could easily imagine Miss Havisham lurking behind one, staring into the garden for the lover who jilted her.
There is an attic with secret compartments. There is a cellar right out of Edgar Allen Poe, with a labyrinth of rooms with low ceilings and concrete floors that grit underfoot, and the naked stone the house is built on sweating its dank smell into the air. There are even two wine caves. And of course there are no lights, anywhere, so it is dark even in the daylight, requiring one to wear a headlamp or carry a flickering candle like the Final Girl in a horror movie.
Despite these conditions we’ve already had quite a few visitors. People want to come to Portugal and don’t care too much about the state of the house, as they are coming for the beaches and the castles and the seafood. How bad can it be, they reason. Ha ha!
I tell people there are holes in the ceilings, holes in the floors, missing windows, doors that only open with a screech, and myriad places rats can get in and they say, Oh I’m sure it’s fine! and buy a plane ticket. And mostly it is fine… but there is always the moment they see a dark gaping hole above them for the first time, their expression telling me I’m not the only one with a horror imagination.
Or maybe they are just responding aesthetically, and it’s only me, the horror writer, who sees the broken rafters barely holding back the darkness above the ceiling. Maybe it’s only me that imagines a stream of bats pouring out of that hole, or a rat king falling squirming to the floor, or a white eyeless face peering down then pulling back just before my glance travels upward.
This is why I can’t be left alone. My brain is always trying to scare me to death.
Still there are unexpected advantages to living in a place that hasn’t been occupied or in any way maintained for more than four decades.
You can let chickens in the house.
3 chicks orphaned last weekend
We have rescued four orphan chicks, and we let them roam the house at will. Chicken poop on the floor? Who cares. These floors all have to be sanded and painted or replaced anyway - and shit washes off. Well, some of it does. Princess Leia, the first chick to be orphaned, likes to eat blueberries, which makes her poop a very juicy blue. But even this has brought a benefit - the stains gave us the idea to paint the raw wood of the dining room floor a deep midnight blue. It’s going to look great with our purple velvet dining room chairs and the red Persian rug.
We figured why not go ahead and spread wood chips in the living room so the chicks can scratch around there in the sunlight and think they are outside? They can’t run away or get killed by cats, birds of prey or roosters, and they are amusing to watch, especially when they decide to scratch around on our sleeping chocolate Labrador Jake to see if they can find bugs.
The orphan chicks are often joined in the house by some of the bolder members of the flock, particularly Alphonse and Potsy, two roosters who have a fondness for peanuts and come looking for them in between feeding time, often leading a lady friend or two.
There is no need to decorate for Halloween - you ARE Halloween.
Halloween is starting to be a thing in Portugal. Our neighbors tell me it’s mostly in the form of parties but there is trick or treating too. The grocery store had a Halloween candy promotional display last October; the candy choice was sparse by American standards - you can’t find mini or bite-sized candy bars, and the second tier candy that you only see at American gas stations and in big mixed bags sold at Walgreens - Dots, Milk Duds, Boston Baked Beans, Tootsie Rolls - is wholly absent, a crime considering candy corn somehow made it across the pond. Nestle is the dominant candy brand, though M&Ms have a strong presence too.
Last October we had only three trick-or-treaters, all courtesy of our contractor Tiago who brought his daughters over. They wore costumes and carried pumpkin pails for their candy that were so small American children would assume they were being punished, and cry.
All we had to do was put some candles on the steps, prop the front door open, augment the real spider webs on our front porch railing with fake spider webs, and stand in a sheet (me) and a wolf mask (the h) and voila, the Haunted Mansion came to spooky life.
By the time the kids came through the old rusty gate that needed to be kicked open, traversed the long walkway with the missing calcadas and stinking of ancient chicken poop, and stood in the courtyard with the house looming in front of them, the windows lightless, some of them missing glass, they were already nervous. When they saw the porch festooned with spiderwebs, the huge front door standing open, candles flickering on the step, they were clutching their daddy. When the man shape with a wolf face appeared in the doorway with a low growl, a moaning ghost swaying behind him, seeming to float, they were convinced.
Naaaaooooooo cried the littlest one, squirming in her daddy’s arms. NAO!
We took off our masks to reassure them and offered candy. Take two or three, we urged.
Next year will be even better. Heh.
You don’t have to apologize for the state of your house to guests.
We have a broom, vacuum and mop and I use them all often but you can barely tell. The kitchen tile is faded by the sun so looks dirty. The tiles on the wall have been washed many times with soap, bleach, ammonia, you name it - the stains remaining are not coming off. The kitchen counter tiles are deeply stained - after washing many times I put sheets of plastic down on top, as something in my mind (my mother, probably) simply would not accept those stains weren’t new/removable.
Despite weeks of deep cleaning to make it minimally livable, it looks like what it is - a house that has been abandoned for more than four decades.
The wood floors in a number of rooms were protected by carpeting that had rotted from red to black, like old blood, so aren’t in bad shape (except for the Princess Blueberry poop stains, that is) but you can’t walk around shoeless in case there are an rusty carpet nails we didn’t see/pull up. I tell this to people - wear flip flops or crocs or soled slippers inside, please! - and they say oh sure got it, and then walk around at night in sock feet, because the rechargeable electric candles glow warm with yellow light and the stained and chipped walls and crumbling concrete where tiles were pried off recede into shadows, making it all seem cozy and quaint.
I started thinking maybe I am catastrophizing with my ‘what ifs’ and I should just appreciate that people can feel at home enough to walk in sock feet - right up until a guest said, can you look at my foot? I strapped on my headlamp and nearly fainted with horror at the sight of the gash in his foot, three inches long, bloody, oozing, purple and swelling. I guess I stepped on something, he said. I guess you did, I said brightly, trying to keep my voice from shaking. I washed it out and treated it with antibiotic ointment and luckily it healed and I did not have to navigate the emergency and hospital systems with my learner’s permit Portuguese.
You appreciate the smallest luxuries.
I have never been a super demanding guest - I’m the kind of person who if a waiter at a restaurant brings me something I didn’t order, I’ll eat it rather than point out the error - but now that I live in a house where I have to use my hip to force the front door open (and it screams like a woman when I do it) I’m laid back in the extreme. If I can sleep without a hat, wash my hands in warm water, walk on the floor barefoot and shower indoors, I’m basically fine. Give me high thread count sheets and a silk pillowcase and I might cry myself to sleep with happiness. Being awakened by the sound of a toilet flushing in the middle of the night makes me smile at the miracle of indoor plumbing, and I go back to sleep happy in the knowledge that getting out of bed wll only require swinging my feet to the floor, and not crawling to a tent flap and unzipping it without disturbing my dog, who likes to sleep right in front of it.
“The basics” takes on a whole new meaning
It’s nice to have a fully functioning kitchen but it is not at all essential for cooking delicious food. You can make almost anything with one pot and one pan, sharing a lid between them. You don’t need more than an air fryer and one burner to make a meal, even a big Easter dinner for four people. Chipped unmatched plates and found flatware do not detract from the taste of food. You can make anything tasty with olive oil, salt and pepper - nothing else is really necessary. A mini mason jar makes a great drinking glass, whether water, orange juice or wine.
You can get by with four outfits - #1 for doing dirty jobs, #2 for being presentable whilst walking your dog or going grocery shopping, #3 for going out somewhere nice, #4 for going out somewhere casual (which in a pinch can be covered by outfit #2).
Having water readily available - to cook, to wash - is basic. Running water is a privilege. Hot running water indoors - now we’re talking luxury.
You know that staying warm and keeping cool are more a matter of ingenuity than technology
Few people in Portugal have central heating or air conditioning. They rely on other technologies to combat the hot Portuguese summer - stone walls and tiled floors that retain coolness, shutters that block out the sun, sitting outside in the shade. Our village is literally littered with benches in the shade, and they are often occupied by people chatting or just sitting and being cool. Here is a nice seating area in the middle of nowhere not far from our house - it is just there, for people to sit.
To keep warm, wear layers or go outside and stand in the sun. The Brokedown Palace lets in the wind and rain at nearly every juncture they are usually kept out - e.g. around windows, doors, gutters and the roof, but you can get accustomed to wearing waterproof shoes, sweaters and down vests and wool hats inside. The side benefit: the chickens really like snuggling in down, it reminds them of their mama.
You are resigned that restoration is a step by step (by step by step) process.
The h and I have a joke - there is no “just”. Like when someone says Oh you could just put a fresh coat of paint on that, it would look great! Except you have to power wash it first, for which you need power, which requires an appointment with the power company that takes up to two weeks to happen, which may then require a new electrical box, and then requires you to rent or buy a power washer, which requires a car, and then after washing you have to repair the wall which requires cement and tools and time to let it dry and then and only then can you paint (and oh by the way not if it’s not a painting month, which is a thing here) and also it’s a loooong wall with a rough textured surface so you need a paint sprayer and also requires you to know about things like anti-mold agent or you’ll be painting it all again in just a few months.
We hate the word just.
Every project is a constellation of processes with many steps. If you’re not doing the project, or haven’t done one just like it, then likely you haven’t thought through the process or the steps as thoroughly as the person doing it has. You just haven’t.
A friend wrote and asked if she could come. I told her, yes… but there is no electricity. And she said Okay, got it, and when she arrived a week later and there was no electricity she said I thought you’d have electricity by now. Why did you think that, I asked and she said Well I thought you just hadn’t gotten around to calling the electric company yet and my head exploded. I did not explain to her how that call required us to first find the electric meters on this abandoned property, report to the police which electric meters were missing so the electric company could issue a new one but none of that could happen until the building needing the electricity actually had a roof and doors that worked.
A friend emailed me, Hey we’re coming to France and thought we’d swing by and see you in Portugal! Great! I replied… except we don’t have running water or power, only a generator. She wrote back Oh we don’t need anything fancy just a bed! Not realizing that we didn’t actually have a bed and so had to go buy a bed, and then when the bed didn’t get delivered in time find a place that sold trundle beds and another that sold mattresses and another that sold sheets and pillows and pillowcases and kluge one together less than twelve hours before she landed. And also not realizing that a bed was not all she needed, but also a headlamp and candles to light the stairs so she didn’t fall down the steps in the pitch dark of the unelectrified house, as another guest did. (update: two guests have done this)
So, if you know someone going through a renovation, take a tip from me and remove the word “just” from your vocabulary. There is no just. There just isn’t.
All that being said, you learn to appreciate each step of the process. How do you say, little wins along the way, I asked my language teacher Pedro. Pequenas vitorias, he said. There may still be holes in the ceilings and floors but the outside of the property has a beautiful array of solar lights at night, the flowers we planted in our built-in flower boxes last fall are in full bloom, the tree limbs hanging dangerously out of our garden into the street have been removed and chipped and spread around the garden for the chickens to scratch around in…. there is a lot of big stuff still to do but our lives are full of little victories.
You become a neighborhood oddity and find that you like it.
There are towns in Portugal where there are many immigrants - Lisbon, Cascais, the Algarve to name a few. But our village, Belas, is not one of them. Here, immigrants - especially Americans - are a bit of an oddity. Buying this old property that’s been abandoned so long people actually forgot it had ever been occupied also makes us an oddity. People are always stopping across the street, or pausing at the front gate at the foot of the driveway, to see what strange things we are doing - running a weed whacker or power washer or chainsaw or wood chipper, or tending a burn barrel with flames ten feet high, chopping down a tree or hauling wagons full of furniture, ancient clothes and magazines to the dumpster.
We have no car so walk everywhere - to the grocery store, to the post office, to restaurants. We are always wearing the same clothes (see #5 above) - at least until our containers arrive - so are highly recognizable even if we aren’t speaking English.
There is often a chicken on my shoulder (Princess Leia likes to ride around and see the sights). With the latest chick rescue the h often has a chicken on his shoulder too. Oh my god, he said the other day. I’ve become like those weird dudes who walk around with a parrot on their shoulder.
Yes, I said. Isn’t it great? He agreed that it was.
Chickens in the house, I’m sold. Gosh I love chickens. And we’ve been considering buying a derelict place in Portugal, so stumbling upon your Substack seems serendipitous! 😆
Yes, the little jumping beans are quick. The booties exaggerate the movements on that chick, like a miniature clown. She is the tiniest chick, and the last to emerge from her shell.