Our Corfu renovation...So far!

We fell in love with the island of Corfu after just one visit. The second time we visited was to look for our dream home! After months of searching online we had arranged a short visit to view three properties. The first was a complete renovation and completely derelict.

The second was our new home, it looked perfect and mainly cosmetic - #wishfulthinking

The third was a turn key property (move in ready) and recently renovated.

The first two were on the market with Roula Rouva estate agents and we found them on Rightmove.

I had my heart set on villa number two - the green villa (it is no longer green). Located in a traditional Greek village in the North of the island but close to larger towns. It was the ideal location for us!

It also had everything on our dream home wish list:

Seaview’s, Swimming pool, a renovation project and additional self contained units for family and holiday rental.

A little bit about the villa when we bought it...

The villa is over 150 years old and was historically the main bakery for the village. It has some beautiful original features like a large fireplace in the kitchen and a circular bathroom, which was where they stored the dough to rise.

When we purchased the property the main villa comprised of three bedrooms, a lounge, downstairs family bathroom and a large kitchen. Attached to the main villa is a self contained annexe with two bedrooms, an open plan kitchen-lounge and a bathroom. There is also a small granny flat in the garden which we currently refer to as the rat nest! It is a three storey compact self contained unit which eventually will become a small romantic Airbnb bolthole.

The villa had been empty for 5 years and on the market for 8 when we purchased. It is a large property which had sadly fallen into disrepair. It was perfect for us, a renovation challenge and somewhere we could grow into.

We plan to live in the main villa once the renovation is completed and use the annexe plus granny flat for friends and family as well as advertise them for holiday rental. We're currently living in the annexe because it had a fire for the winter (with was 100% needed and our only source of heating!) as well as a working kitchen which the main villa does not at present.

With a new property they say you work from the ground up. With an older property you work from the roof down, so that's exactly what we did.

I've always dreamt of a bedroom with a vaulted or cathedral ceiling but its never been possible. After a quick peak up in the loft we began by tearing down the old ceiling. Taking it right back to the beams. We removed the old pine ceiling cladding and musty insulation. After that we quickly released the roof needed to be repaired. We could see the sunlight shining through large gaps in the roof tiles and there was no waterproofing at all.

In hindsight we really should have had a look inside the roof space before putting our offer in on the house! We would have done this in the UK but at the viewing we thought we would get a full structural survey on the property which would highlight any big issues. I also didn't want to get my white sundress dirty crawling around the attic! Unfortunately, structure surveys aren't the same here and we instead received an engineers report confirming the 'existing arbitrary structures and property modifications' had met code along with a technical structural inspection report and topographic diagrams which outlined the property boundaries. The structural inspection report didn't go into the same detail as a full structural survey and didn't cover the roof.

The state of the roof was a real set back as the same week we had rain water pouring into the annexe bedroom which sits partly under the roof terrace! So not only did we need to fix the roof terrace we also possibly needed a compete new roof #nightmare

We decided to tackle the roof on the main villa first. Getting it water tight was our number one priority. It was pretty miserable at times in the annexe as when it rained we had nights in a damp bed and were driven crazy by the drip, drip, drip. Being the winter however we just had to lump it. It was too cold and too wet to start attempting to waterproof the roof terrace. We positioned a bin bag over the ceiling fan in the bedroom and emptied the water out every few days whilst counted down the weeks until Spring.

Once the roof of the main villa was repaired we turned our attention to the roof terrace and swimming pool....Stay tuned for how we have made the terrace waterproof (YAY!!!!) and revamped the pool!

Thanks for reading! x