We had talked to Joaquin about the water coming in through the ceiling in the room that will become our new kitchen, and he said he would come back on Monday, lift a few tiles on the roof terrace and see what’s going on. He thought the problem was the membrane under the tiles, it was old and breaking up but wanted to see the extent of the problem. Taking comfort from the fact that they had left some very expensive tools on site, we trusted them to be back on Monday!

Meanwhile, our English neighbours arrived to do some Christmas shopping, and were sorely disappointed to find there were holidays and no shops open! But they are great company and having them around made us feel as though we were on holiday too!

The Monday after the holidays arrived, and so did the builders, at 8.15am, and proceeded to start lifting the tiles on the roof terrace with an electric jack hammer!

Joaquin arrived and inspected the roof. The membrane was very low grade, the consistency of a bin liner, and it had not been laid correctly, allowing water to run down the walls and get between the walls and the tiles, meaning when sufficient water built up it started to come through the ceiling. He convinced us that he could patch it now, but we would just get the problem somewhere else next year, or the year after, so – what the hell, we agreed to let him take the whole lot up and replace the membrane and the tiles. He carefully explained that

although we might like the tiles already there it was not possible to use the same tiles – not really suitable for the job, but he would come back tomorrow, take us to a tile shop in La Roda and we could choose some others.

We were convinced we would be presented with so much choice we wouldn’t be able to make a decision, conscious we were getting closer and closer to Christmas and concerned about what that would do to our timescales.