Big CHALLENGES! How We Left the UK and Started Life in Bulgaria

Ever wondered what it would be like to pack your things and find a new life abroad? We've left the UK and bought a farmhouse in rural Bulgaria. It's the front of the house. By the end of this video you'll see what it took for a family of five to reset and find more freedom. We bought our house before the national currency changed from the LEV to the EURO. Since buying the property we've started to renovate. You should create a new fashion. Anyway, let's get to work. But before we get you up to speed with the work that we've started doing to renovate the house, let's start with what we actually did to be able to leave the UK and reset in Bulgaria. We sold what we could from the house and then we moved everything under one roof so that we could reconcile all of our belongings, sell what we could and store what we couldn't. Four days later we arrived in Sofia. The capital of Bulgaria. And it was beautiful. Prior to arriving in Sofia we didn't book anything. Whilst looking around for a property we stumbled upon a two bedroom house that was listed on booking. It's the front of the house, we've got a garage, then we've got this massive barn. This barn is massive. And then behind the barn you've got, I'm going to keep walking, it's a long walk, we've got this massive garden. The video doesn't show you how big it is but it's massive. It's a massive garden. All the way up there, all the way down there, a load of trees that goes behind the house. Down there, about 2,000 square metres and you've got this big barn here which I'm going to convert into workspace offices. In Bulgaria a lot of rural properties have mud floors and this is normal but not for us so we wanted that to be sorted out straight away. We were not builders and we literally chucked ourselves in the deep end and tried to swim. In the end, after having a little mini breakdown, we called a local Bulgarian in who did the floor straight away. No, I'm joking, that's fine. It's gone. Yeah. And get this small area big enough for a pizza, you've got pizzas in there. Yeah. Like a feature but brick it all up properly. Get rid of that backing that we're going to do anyway. Yeah. And brick it all up. So it must have came in through the door. Yeah. You're lucky. What have I done? So we're going to go and let this mouse go. Yep. Because we don't want to kill him. No. He's not the mouse I thought he was. He's not half the mouse I thought he was. Or she. Our plan for next year is to get a garden in a workable state, start planting things that as a family, we want to eat. So things like potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, we're going to try and get an area within the garden that's good enough for us to plant these things. What was that? Now I'll just clean out this. Make sure it's clear. The mud. The gutter. Yeah. All from the gutter. Yeah. So when we get the rain, it's not going to back up. Mm-hmm. I've got a thing working though. That filter. Oh, yeah. It's sucking all the paper and stuff right now. That's good. Yeah. That's upside. It's a bit breezy today. You can see over there the rain's coming. Yeah. You can see the little bit of, um, cloudy, cloudiness coming over. I don't know. All of this was done then? No, no. Most of that. That's my thing stopped that. Oh, right. All this here. This stopped it. Oh, brilliant. Or that would have gone right underneath. Oh, right. So it's just mud. Yeah. It stopped a lot of it today. Yeah. That's probably there before probably. Mm-hmm. All the time. So I'm going to make this nice and good. I'm going to clean them filters and put them back. Yeah. I've got two filters. I've got one there. Mm-hmm. And I put one here. Right. The other one's still there. No, I took it out. Oh, you took it out. See, that's one there. The bigger one. Yeah. The smaller ones. Mm-hmm. Oh, here. Oh, there, yeah. That's the bigger one there. Right. That's some of it. See, look. Stuff is caught. Look. Right. Yeah, yeah. That was in there as well. That one. All this stuff here. Was in it. Yeah. Caught in it. Yeah. It's like a natural trap. Yeah. So it starts, and then the water goes over the top of it. So the second one, it goes there just so it catches it twice. Yeah, and you find it's working. Yeah. Well, all that would have gone down there. Yeah. All that would have been washed in and blocked it up. That's brilliant. Remember, I dug it all out. Mm-hmm. And there's solid. Yeah. I dug a load of mud out from there, so I can see right down there now. Wow. All toad and all sorts. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the toad. Yeah, I forgot. It's about to stop things like toads and stuff going down there. Yeah. And all the snakes and animals. We also got a lot of grapes from our grapevine, and that was very delicious for us. So we made some grape juice and put it in the fridge. And now we're in winter, and at some nights, it gets down to minus 11. I can't see my lovely path. I'm on it. Oh, there he is. There he is. Look, there he is. Our reset in Bulgaria hasn't been easy nor straightforward, but each challenge is shaping the life we came here to build. We're renovating each room at a time. This was the before and after of the lounge. We changed the windows from green to ivory. And now we're in the pantry, and we realized that it is falling away from the main property. So now, Chris is reinforcing the extension, installing insulation, and we're transforming this room into a cozy pantry. What do they call it again? Pantry, that's it. Pantry room. So now I've started on putting insulation, which I've been cutting there. I've just done the first panel to show you what I'm going to do. So I'm going to put insulation panel on this wall. This is the outside wall. There's a window there. I've covered it over. There's no curtain on there at the moment. Put insulation all the way across there, maybe along this wall as well. And that's the inside wall. There's a room next door, which I'll show you another time. So I might insulate this one as well, but definitely the outside wall, that's where I'm going to work on today. And then maybe after, I'm going to do the ceiling. I've got a condensation problem here, so once I sort it out and dry it out, then I'm going to do the ceiling. And then I'm going to do the same on that wall. I'm going to insulate that wall, which is the outside wall there. It's supposed to be a good insulation. So I'm going to put it on there. I'm going to use a special glue and put it on the wall so you can see how it works. Yeah. You'll like my little drawings I've done there. Bit of cement on the wall. It's crazy when you cement something on the wall, it ends up looking like something. I've done a turtle. I've managed to do a rat. I don't know what that is, but it looks like some kind of animal. There's a picture of something there. A person. An air jog. And I've also done whatever it's called. So I've been doing a lot of measurements, writing it all down on the wall so I can remember what's what. I'll transfer this to the insulation once I've got the insulation up around there, what the measurements are, just so I remember the distances between the bits I need to cut for the woods, or whatever I'm going to put on here later. But for now I'm just going to concentrate on the insulation and get it done. I've cut this out. That's the insulation form. And I'm going to be sticking it on here. Like that. That's going to be one. This one's going to go up there like so. It's going to be over here. And then, just to show you, I've cut other bits out like this. I'm going to use a special kind of glue to put them up there. That's it there. Insulation glue. You put it on the wall. You've got to make sure the surface is very clean. You put it on the wall. You use a spreader like this. It's got a little perforated edge on it. You've got to use that. These are literally 30 pence from the hardware store. And then you use a spreader and then you put it on there and you spread it on the wall directly. Obviously you've got to make sure it's dust free, dirt free, and grease free, and all that kind of stuff. And then once that's on there, then you put it on about one to two centimetres thick. And once on there, then you can put this on and that will keep that on there. But also, it just stops the condensation behind it. I'm going to put this wall first and then I'm going to see how it looks. And then I'll decide if I'll do this wall and maybe the wall behind it. First of all, let me crack open. And this stuff is ready to go, so let's see how this goes. Right, so which one should I use? Right. Apparently, just stick it on. I've cleaned the wall, by the way. So you do that. It's just like that, apparently. One to two centimetres. This thing sort of gauges how much you've got on, so you can't really put on too much. Because then the glues sort of gauge how deep it is, which is good. I don't worry about measuring stuff. I've done quite a lot of that over the last few weeks. Right. And then over there, like so. I'm open-ended, right? I'm just guessing. I'm one of those guys who don't read instructions and I just do it. So let me show you what I'm doing there. Right, so this is adhesive, so it's some kind of glue. It covers about 400. Is it 400? I can't remember what it covers. I'll have to have a look again and let you know. But it covers quite a bit of area. It depends on how much you put on and how much you're doing. I've got one tub, which is five kilograms, which should hopefully be enough. Give it a little wiggle to do. If not, it's another hour trip to the store, which I got it from. It says, oh, it does it. Okay. Right. Might as well do the other side as well. I'll top it because I'm going to have to... I don't know how quick it goes off. I didn't even look. So if it goes off too quick, I'll be in trouble. Right. I think I've done enough. Right. And there, come on. As you can see there, I've got some plug sockets, wall sockets I mentioned before. And, well, that one up there is for the wall cheater. That one there is a plug socket and a light switch. I'm going to have to work out which wire is which because none of these wires are labelled. I believe the left side is always alive. The right side is neutral. That's what I'm going to go with. And the light switch is quite easy because it doesn't matter which way you go. It'll work. Just, obviously, if you want to be down to put it on, you have to have it the right way on. So you have to just get the wire the right way round. But, you know, nothing will go wrong with that. So I'm going to mess about with that later. But for now, I'm just going to focus on... Now I'm going to focus on putting the installation on this side of the wall. Cut out there so I can do the electrics later. And also cut out an area there. So it exposes that as well so I can finish it off later. But I'm going to insulate it now. And then I'm going to do the inside wall going down there. Right, I'll just cut that in. Would you ever consider starting over with your family in a new country? Let us know in the comments below. Today I'm going to prepare a pot to plant some garlic. The other day I went to the store and I found some garlic that was already growing. I know it's a bit cheating but we might as well separate the cloves and get them growing. So I've got this little pot here that I am actually going to just do myself. Because this was a pot that had food in it but why not repurpose it as a growing pot. You know, a starter pot. First thing though, I'm going to have to make some holes. I'm using this underneath because I don't want the pot to shatter. I've just got a little tool. One of these. Honestly, Chris gave it to me. Garlic likes to be well drained. Making sure that we put the holes. Nearly, see that nearly happened there. Well drained holes in the pot. Why not repurpose the pot? You know, I don't see no reason why not. So what I'm going to do is have gravel at the bottom of the pot. And soil, a little bit of compost at the top. And what I am going to do is mix the molehill mud with some of the garden mud. Because the soil in Bulgaria is actually quite healthy. I'm going to try not to pick up any weeds in it though. And with the molehill I will heat it on the petchka. There you go. So we have some holes there. How many holes are there? Three, six. So we have twelve, uh, eighteen holes at the bottom here. I'm going to go get the gravel. You guys can come with me. Give it a layer at the bottom of gravel. And then the molehill mixed with mud. Maybe forty, fifty percent off that on the next level. And that is really it. Because I haven't got rotted enough compost yet to put at the top. I will go and get the gravel and layer at the bottom. Next layer up will be the molehill mixed with some garden mud. Which we've got in the garden there. Let's go get this mud. I think I've spoken, talked far too much. One second. Garlic doesn't mind the cold. As long as you don't leave it soaking in rainwater. So we've got a good little area to put it in just behind the wall. That shouldn't get too frosty. Let's go and get some gravel. Right. I have just gone and got some fresh molehill mud. And what I'm going to do is put it on the Petrica for a moment. Basically to sterilise it. Heat it up. Make it get quite hot for about twenty to thirty minutes. And then we'll use it. Right, I've also gone and got some feet. Essentially I'm going to treat it like a little mini bed. Like a little mini raised bed. And what I'm going to do, it's not an experiment I guess, but what I will try to do is create a raised bed sort of environment where we have the twigs at the bottom. These will all kind of layer the bottom. I don't want too much though. It really is just to add a bit of drainage at the bottom of this pot. Let me go and see if the molehill mud is ready. It's getting a bit dark now. Like I said, it's frosty now, look. It's really nice. As promised last week, we were not able to knock down the building because we were hit by a snowstorm in Bulgaria. And this has literally halted everything. Next time, I finish planting my garden. Came out this morning to finish off what I started yesterday. And yes, it is snowing. And it's supposed to be snowing for the next few days. The electric has just gone off. We're preparing for the first snowstorm on our homestead and the pantry should be finished.