Making a Slightly Creepy Stone Barn Livable for a Portuguese Winter

There’s something incredibly overwhelming about buying a piece of land without much infrastructure and proclaiming it my new home. It seems slightly bonkers… I don’t really know much of anything about off grid living! Sure, I can build a few things out of mud and I know a bit of carpentry, but I’ve never been much of a camping type and I really had no idea where to start to be able to turn a piece of land into a livable place – especially with winter approaching.

When I decided I wanted to buy property in Portugal, one of my main requirements was a ruin, preferably in shambles. I wanted a pile of rocks to build back up, rather than a completed building to move right into. Well, fast forward to the present and I’m incredibly happy to have a solid structure already on the land. True, it’s a somewhat creepy stone barn with no windows and the idea of living in it gave me the heebie-jeebies, but it was a much better starting point for me than moving into my tiny ultralight tent.

So I have a creepy barn… what next? I’ll want to move in before the winter starts but it feels like there are approximately one zillion things to do before that can happen. First step? Make a list! That’s what this blog post will aim to do and hopefully it’ll give me a bit of direction.

Research and Planning

The land sale was agreed in July but it didn’t fully go through until mid-September. Luckily, the owners didn’t mind me snooping around on the land whenever I wanted and I was even allowed to start a bit of work. This gave me a whole lot of time to plan and think about and fret about how to turn this small, dark, windowless stone shed into something that I wouldn’t be afraid of sleeping in. I’m obsessed with natural building and I’d been dreaming about this moment of design freedom on my own land… but it’s all actually quite overwhelming!

Working with a blank canvas brings with it this weird sort of fear of starting anything at all. The very first decisions will have an effect on everything else that comes later, and that’s a bit intimidating. What if I don’t think of something? What if I design a certain feature to be somewhere and then it’s in the way later? What if I don’t have the skills to actually pull off my crazy design ideas? What if it all falls down? What if, what if, what if?

I’ve been pretty adamant from the start about not building too many structures early on and attempting to do the permaculture thing and observe for a whole year, but there’s a lot to do on my structure before I move in, so that’s fair game. I want to be living on my land by mid-November so I can hang out with my trees after they’re planted. Plus, being on the land will help me get to know the place and there’s also the more practical reason of not having to pay rent or spending my time doing work exchanges (though I will do them when I can because I love to).

So if I want to move onto my land by mid-November, I’ll need to make the stone shed into a habitable building and that’s going to require a lot of work between now and then. I’ve got a list of ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ before I’ll feel comfortable enough to move in and I have to say that the list is getting smaller and smaller as time goes on. A couple of months ago I wasn’t going to consider moving in without solar power and a water pump all set up. Now I’m like ‘candles are cool and the tank isn’t that far of a walk… buckets of water will work!’ Hopefully things won’t get that dire, but the first step is actually trying to figure out what the next steps will need to be to make this building livable!

The Plan for the Essentials

If I’m going to have a mid-November move in I’ve got a lot to do! Below is a list of some of the things I think are fairly essential for life in an off-grid barn-like structure.

• Access and Parking – While the road down to the land from the village isn’t amazing, it’s perfectly ok for most vehicles. However, access to the land itself on the top terrace wasn’t amazing and I couldn’t even park my car there. I’ve already spent a bunch of time improving access to this terrace, partly so I could park but mostly so I could have materials delivered. I’m happy to report that I can park and I had my first delivery of gravel last week… so that’s one thing ticked off of my list so far!

• Waterproof the Building – I can’t start work on the inside of my building until I know that it’s not going to fill up with water anytime it rains. This has been a tricky one to check because I’ve had to wait for the rain to come to see what’s up. It rained a bit last week and I was happy to see that there was no sign of the roof leaking. So the roof seems solid but unfortunately water oozed in through the back wall and created a damp spot on the floor. Since the first rain I’ve had the ridge tiles cemented in place to be even more confident about the roof, and I’ve started to dig a trench around the outside of the building (focusing on the back wall) to add a French drain. I’m still not sure about whether water will seep up through the floor, bu the drain should help with this. I’ve got to wait for a major downpour before I’m sure about water tightness, but I’m taking steps to make as sure as I can that it is.

• Natural Light – The structure is only about five by six metres on the inside with walls just over half a metre thick and the only light coming into this tank of a building is through the door – if it’s open. Closed, the building basically feels like a sarcophagus and I definitely couldn’t live in there without a window. Putting a window into the super thick stone walls isn’t going to be simple, but I’m having a crack at that right now because it’s probably the most important thing on my list. I’ve also thought about cutting a hole in the metal door to add a small window or putting a couple of glass tiles on the roof, but I think those add-ons in the future. I want a window as much for light as for… air? Ya, air and ventilation are also important, I suppose.
• Warmth – It’s October 3rd and there’s a definite chill in the air already. Portugal has a reputation for warm, sunny days but I can assure you that it gets a lot colder here that you’d expect. I’ve heard plenty of stories from friends who’ve moved here and attempted to brave their first winters without any source of heat or insulation and it hasn’t gone well. So ensuring optimal coziness is going to be key for me to be able to spend a winter in my building. At an absolute minimum, this will mean installing a wood burning stove. It’s a fairly easy thing to do with the most difficult part being choosing one and poking a hole in the roof for the chimney. A friend has offered to help me pick a stone and I think the stove people can install the chimney, so it’ll hopefully be a quick job when the time comes. The trickiest parts will be designing the space and choosing where the stove will go and also figuring out where to store wood to keep it dry.
• Place to Sleep – I could have gone super hardcore on this and just rolled out my depressingly thin camping mat with my awesome camping pillow (because what is camping without a pillow, I ask you?) and sleeping bag and just slummed it up right there on the concrete floor. But I am not hardcore. I like my sleep and I also like naps, so having a nice place to slumber is a priority. I recently bought a comfortable new mattress and my plan is to build a bed frame or, if I haven’t had time to do that, pick up something cheap as a temporary bed until I do.

• Water – My plan from the start was to get my drinking and cooking water from a nearby fountain that sends cold, clean, mineral-rich water out of the side of the mountain. I’ve already got that part sorted by using a simple 25 litre stainless steel container that I keep topped up. Water for cleaning and building is another matter but I can get it by walking down a terrace and filling up a bucket from my tank. It’s not an ideal situation but I have water and I can easily access it, so it’s not something that will stop me from moving onto the land if I don’t have a better system in place yet. I also have a well further down on the land that I recently had cleaned, so that’s another option for the future once I get a pump.
• Toilet – One of the first things I bought for the land was a giant bucket to crap in. Yep. That was my first infrastructure item. Pretty much everyone I know here has a compost toilet and about half of them have designed a system where you poo into giant buckets and then seal them off for two years once they’re full. After two years… compost! I know it seems icky to most people but it’s the way forward and I feel like a bucket system would be the best option for me, too. So when I was in town with a friend and he discovered a guy selling giant buckets, he picked one up and I figured, what the hell, I’ll need one so why not? They cost over 50 euro new and it seems like extreme overkill to buy a brand new barrel just to stick poo into it, so the 10 euro buckets were a deal I couldn’t pass up. But those giant barrels also require a structure to go over them, so that’s something for later. In order to bridge the gap, my plan is to build a box with a smaller bucket inside that I’ll empty into the bigger barrel as needed. You might think this is gross but, oh the poo buckets I’ve emptied in my day! It was a regular chore at Keela Yoga Farm for several years until they added a more permanent structure, so I’m certainly not shy about tossing crap from one bucket to another. I seem to have been working on the small toilet box for an eternity, but I’m hoping to have it finished soon and I’ll install it (basically place it in the corner of the house) as soon as I do.
• Place to Shower – Not only have I emptied my fair share of human poo out of buckets, I’ve also had plenty of bucket showers over the years. Don’t worry, different buckets. Heating up some water and sticking it into a bucket to shower with is my plan for the early days and I think you can buy USB-charged mini pumps to get the water from bucket to head-height. I’d also need to create a space outside with some privacy and also a way for the bucket water to drain away, or I can just stand in a larger plastic tub and empty it when I’m done. My other plan is to hope that my friends with proper showers take pity on me from time to time.
• Place to Cook and Clean – I’m ok without having proper refrigeration over winter if I have to, but I’ll need somewhere to cook and a place to do dishes and all of that fun stuff. I’ve bought a gas cooker with an oven from some friends and will have it in a couple of weeks, so that’s sorted. For cleaning up… a few plastic buckets and some cloths, soap, and dish towels should do, right? Laundry is a whole other matter but there are machines in Fundão and maybe the friends with proper washing machines will also take pity on me.
• Security – Right now the building feels incredibly secure. I don’t live there yet but I keep things locked inside so I don’t have to keep moving my tools around. I don’t have anything too expensive there yet because you never know, but it feels really secure. There’s a lockable metal door on the front and when I put a window in I’ll make sure that feels secure as well. The land feels a bit isolated even though it’s on the edge of a village, so I’ll want to also put some outdoor lighting in various spots around the property so it’s not so dark. Eventually I’d like to build a wall around the perimeter of the top terrace and have a gate, but that’s a low priority for now.
• Buy House-y Stuff – Making a structure into something cozy, secure, leak-proof, and livable is one thing but I’ll still need all of those little bits that one needs to fill a house with. Table, chairs, dishes, cups, cutlery, pots, pans, towels, bed sheets, pillows… etc etc and on and on. I’ve started to accumulate things here and there but, as I’m ready to move, in I’ll want to do a big shop (or see what friends are looking to off load) and fill in all of the things I missed.

The Plan for the Non-Essentials (But Nice-to-Haves)

• Solar Power – ‘Power as a non-essential?!’, I hear you asking? Ya… I’m not so sure about this one myself. Life without electricity doesn’t really appeal to me at all, especially when I’m living in a dark building on a dark piece of land. But installing solar power is something that’s not in my control and I’ll have to wait until the solar people have time. I don’t want to have it installed until I’m living in the building, so that gives me about six weeks to get it sorted. It’ll be on my list of things to install very soon after I move in, and I hope that the solar people are available around then as well. As it stands, I still haven’t been able to get a meeting with them to get a quote. It’s not really in my control and I’ll make due without power for awhile if I have to, but I’ll do my very best to time things so the solar system is installed soon after I move to my land.
• Rain Water Collection – I have an idea for creating rain water collection system to get water from my roof and steer it into four or five 240 litre buckets that will be setup in the weirdly-sized space right behind my house. It’ll be a system that takes rain water from my roof through the gutter to the top barrel and then as that first barrel fills, the water will be piped down to the lowest barrel where I’ll access the water. I might even get fancy and have some sort of a pump that turns on to get the water to a kitchen tap inside the house. The overflow will be sent to my water tank and well on the lower terraces, and the barrel system will be setup to gravity feed down to the rest of the land when I need it. That’s the idea anyway.
• Water Pump – If I’m able to set up a sweet rain water catchment system then I might get away with not having to worry about pumping water until next spring. It can rain a lot here during the winter and you can catch a surprisingly large amount of water off of even a small roof. From there I’m hoping I can gravity feed the water down to the rest of my land and I won’t need a pump. But when spring rolls around and the rain stops falling I’ll need a pump to move water from the well at the bottom of my land up to the barrels by my house so I can then do the gravity fed water thing again. So, while this would be nice to have in case the rain doesn’t fall as much as expected, it’s something I’m hoping I can avoid dealing with for awhile.
• Storage – Since I won’t have any other buildings at first, I’ll need to keep all of my tools and bike and other stuff locked up inside the building along with me. I don’t have that much stuff, but I also won’t have that much space and some of what I do have is quite bulky so I’ll want to figure out a good way to store things. At a minimum this will probably mean some shelving, but eventually I’d like to build a storage mezzanine and some way to hang my bike from the ceiling or on a wall. Plus if I don’t want to be living with wood inside my house and constantly resupplying it, I’ll want to build a covered wood storage area outside or a shed if I’m feeling ambitious.

Quality and Beauty Versus the Need for Speed

Right now my definite focus is on practicality and speed of installation over beauty but I want to balance that with getting the major infrastructure things working well from the start. I’ll want to take time to design my rain water catchment system and the piping of water around my land so that I’m not messing with it too much in the future. I’ll want to invest in a good wood burner and be smart about where I put it in the building so I won’t have to move it (and the chimney hole) again. I’ll want to get a good quality window that won’t lose heat and put it in a place in the wall that makes the most sense. I’ll put a lot of design thought and effort into nailing the infrastructure stuff from the beginning.

But for many of the other things, it’ll be more of a speedy process. I won’t be building a full kitchen or bathroom from the start, so I’m not going to care so much about where my shower and oven end up for the time being. I’d originally wanted to make a bed frame but as time ticks away, I’ll probably just buy something used that I then sell or give away later. Not everything I buy now will be something that will stay with me… I have a general vision of what the inside of the building might look like, but I won’t be spending any time at all at this stage in making that a reality.

What Now

Well, my car broke down yesterday and will be around €400 to fix, or so I’m told. So that changes a lot around transportation and a little with the budget… but these things happen! So today I’ll be hopping on my bicycle and heading the hilly 5km to my land to get to work.

I’m currently focused on two of the major things on my list – waterproofing the building and putting in a window. That basically means a lot of digging for the ditch and the clawing out of rocks in the wall while the roof is supported over head. Ditch digging is my jam, so I’ve got that well under control but the window making will be a new thing for me. So I’ve got one physical and one mental (and I do mean mental!) project on the go right now which keeps me happy.

Today I’ll also aim to measure the land so I can start to make a design. If I plan to put my growing army of trees in the ground in November, I’ll need to know where to dig the holes. That means making a design for a food forest. Yay! Plus, I love maps and I really want to make a map of the land so I’ll need to know the distances between things so I can attempt to plot everything out. Another important design thing to do is the inside of the building.  There’s only one good spot for the window so the placement didn’t require a design, but the wood burner has more flexibility and I’ll want to sit down and make a complete design for the interior of the building before I start poking holes in the ceiling for the chimney. I’ll get some more exact measurements today of the inside of the building and start doing some drawings.

I’ve got lots to do and it’s felt sort of overwhelming for awhile, but writing everything down has helped. Ok… I guess it’s time to get on my bike and head to my land!