Dream

As a craftsman and ultimately as a husband and dad, I never intended to mix and share too much about my personal life into work. It was a step too close to what a balanced work-life meant for me.

This one is different.

Since me and my wife Marta got together, I always imagined a place we could call our own, where we could build memories ourselves, from scratch and with our own ‘muscle’. It’s not a distant reality to have someone you know with a house somewhere arround the country, either countryside or in a small village. This moving away from the city is what I’m looking for. To be close but far, accessible but in silence. To be lost but able to be called back to reality.

Our space. Our home. Our family.

After what I would say almost two years fighting, we found a piece of land, 1 hour and 10 away from Lisbon with a small ruin. Close to the beach, close to Alentejo.

It is definitely a risk when buying land with no project but it’s one we are willing to make. We’re still young enough to make up for it. And to work for it as well.

Once we signed the contract past July 2023, we knew that we had to make it special. Our neighbours, the previous owners, they all had an attachment to the property but no one would look after it. We will.

I had been working with the municipality to make sure we could build whatever we could and to be sure of it once we did close the deal. Since January.

The final answer came 3 days after we signed the deal: we can build up to 200sqm of a home and up to 155sqm of agricultural shed. Good enough. And quite a risk.

Is it what we always imagined? Probably not, but we never did imagine it to this extent.

Dreams don’t pay taxes yet, so we will keep going.