WE ARE RENOVATING A WATERMILL IN PORTUGAL!

Hi Adventure fam! It has been a very long time since we shared an update on here, but after 2 years of living in Portugal, renovating a historic watermill into our very first home not on wheels, and learning how to take care of land, 3 kitties and ourselves in this new way, it’s about time we write a blog post to commemorate this chapter! We do share weekly episodes every Sunday on our YouTube channel that you’ll want to check out if you haven’t yet!

Below is a photo of what our property looked like when we first arrived in September 2021, vs. the photo above taken during the summer of 2024. It was the first property we saw after landing in Portugal to start our search in 2021, but it took us 2 years to align all the stars, organize our VISA paperwork overseas and go for it! You can watch our first time visiting the mill here. We knew it was a huge dream with a lot of work required, but in the nature of being Mr and Mrs Adventure, together there’s nothing we can’t do! Plus, we love ourselves a good challenge, if we weren’t going to be summiting literal mountains, this watermill could certainly keep us busy for a while… and it just might be the biggest “mountain” we’ve ever set our sites on yet!

We purchased the mill from a sweet Dutch couple that built the newer brick portion of the mill as an extension to the original stone portion. No one had worked on the mill or the land for many years when we arrived. Inside the stone portion of mill, there is an old millstone, or “mo", that was turned by way of the horizontal water wheel placed in the chamber un the home. This would turn with the force of water that channeled up and bhind the house, and down a chute back to the river below. grind the wheat or corn into grain for the village people.

Upon purchasing the mill, along with 3 hectares of land, in 2023, we didn’t realize that underneath all of those thorny bushes, that we actually had 5 beautiful, ancient stone terraces! The photo below is from 2025 where you can see those stone terraces covered in bright green clover on the bottom right, and you will also notice that we made even more terraces rising up from behind the mill. These are to help mitigate erosion from water and to help keep the 50-100 meters around our watermill free from any eucalyptus trees and other fire hazards, something required because of how incredibly dry it gets during the summer months, which they also call “fire season.” Learn more about how we protect ourselves and our home from fires in this episode.

Along with cleaning our land, developing water harvesting systems, building a shade structure and deck for our campervan (which we have been living in stationary for the entire 2+ years of renovating - the first 2 summers we did not have a shade structure…), we have also converted 2 containers into a workshop and storage space, planted our first garden, discovered a water mine in our mountainside, had a 321-foot (107m) well drilled, and got electricity brought down from the mains! Our goal is to create a hybrid solar, water and wind powered system, using mains electricity when absolutely needed. Below are some photos from all that I just mentioned, then we’ll get to the works we’ve done on the watermill itself!

Now comes time for what we’ve done to the watermill itself! Once we first got the keys in May of 2023, we decided to start with the most important part first, replacing the roof. Being in an area so prone to wildfires (which are unfortunately not so wild, and all too often started by arsonists - worth doing some research on if you’re interested), city hall required that the roof be rebuilt, as well as the tree trunk support posts, with concrete and brick. We absolutely loved the magical look of the oak tree trucks in the mill, so reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty’s cottage (which was also a watermill!) but wanting a sturdy and fireproof house, we did what we had to:

We also rebuilt the turret roof, raised it and placed a row of glass blocks underneath to let in more light. Then we topped it all off with the most magical weathervane, because where else would a Mountain Mermaid live but at a watermill!

Then there was the fortification of our retaining wall, or “castle wall” as we like to call it, the plumbing, which they install in the floor here in Europe, the ceilings, the cleaning of the original stone walls (which took 4 of us the entire month of March 2025), the plastering of the newer brick walls and the continued project of restoring all of the original wooden windows and doors that were handmade by the previous owners. These window frames and doors were made of oak and meranti wood, but were never sealed properly or fitted with glass - so that’s where we’re at now:

Then there was that time Drew got stung in the face by a wasp… lucky he returned to his handsome self a few days later, but he was a site for sore eyes… let alone having sore eyes himself! Funny enough, that same week, Matthew McConaughey was stung in the face by a bee, see middle photo below:

And of course in the midst of all that hardwork and transformation, we have had our 3 kitties to help make being in one spot so very special. In case you missed our adoption episode, a wonderful subscriber reached out to us because their friend, who was receiving treatment for cancer, had to leave their home and be closer to their doctor in the city, so couldn’t take their outdoor cats with them. After meeting them all, it was love at first site and we couldn’t imagine our lives at the mill with out their magical little spirits froliking around. Minou is the one-eyed mom and her children, Tom (orange) and Baby (grey), are much larger than she:

That’s all for now folks! We will have to write another update once we are living inside the watermill! We hope to be in by Christmas… but I’m starting to feel like we need to be flexible with that wish. Until then, we hope you’ll join us over on YouTube for our weekly adventures at the watermill, and beyond! So much love, xoxo. Britty and Drew