There is just over three weeks until I head back to Galicia for ‘Barn: PhaseII’ which should hopefully see it close to completion early in the New Year. All that should remain is some carpentry, decoration, and the fitting of a kitchen.
As I am going to flit between Spain and England this time, there has been a lot to think about in the last week; booking ferries, booking flights, booking train tickets, and ordering the centrepiece of the barn lounge, the wood burning stove.
We’d done some looking around a couple of months ago and found the fire that we really liked, made a mental note, and tried to decide when we’d need to order it in time for us to get it and me take it down for installation once the house is watertight. After lots of agonising we decided that Scandanavian was best, and settled on a beautiful Contura.
So when we went to order it a couple of weekends ago, and to confirm that we (read Amanda) was still happy with it, and we had a stroke of luck. The price had been reduced by £200, a saving not to be sniffed at, which put a little smile on my otherwise grumpy face.
Inside I was made up.
Then we (read Amanda) saw a new stove, one which hadn’t been there two months earlier, and promptly fell in love with that one. The bad news was that it was £200 more expensive that the original Contura had been in the first place! My £200 saving was wiped out and we were looking at finding another £200.
Scan (our model is the 58-3) have outlets in Galicia (in A Coruna, Santiago and Pontevedra) so I contacted them by e-mail to see if it was cheaper in Euros and whether I could save the effort of having to take it all the way there with me. All three quoted me the same list price (where is that entrepreneurial spirit amongst the Spanish stove sellers), which when converted to sterling was quite a bit more expensive than here.
I then did an internet trawl and much to my relief and that of my wallet, I eventually managed to find it with a reputable dealer selling for £200 less than it is available near home (and now the same price as the original Contura).
It is now ordered, paid for, and will be collected on my way through Solihull as I head for the ferry at Portsmouth on the 23rd October. Once the doors and windows are in the barn, at least we’ll have the means to be warm.