After 8 years of van life, they were ready to settle down. They bought an abandoned watermill in Portugal to turn into a family home.

After returning to the US in 2018, they continued with van life until mid-2020, when they started thinking about settling down.

“We wanted to have our van, but we also always wanted to have a base camp,” Drew, 36, told Business Insider. The goal is to have a home to live in and be able to start a family.”

Looking for a permanent home

They knew they wanted a place fairly close to the beach, relatively quiet, and with lots of open land.

“We went to Hawaii and looked at land. We went to Northern California, we looked in the deserts of Arizona, but nothing really felt right,” Drew said.

Eventually, they decided to try property hunting in Portugal when pandemic restrictions were lifted, and the borders opened up in 2021.

“It was the only other country during our honeymoon travels where we said we could stop rolling,” Brittany, 36, told BI.

The first property they viewed was an abandoned watermill in the Algarve, Portugal’s southernmost region, and they were immediately smitten.

“I knew in my bones it was the one for us,” Brittany added.

However, the property, which they estimate to be several hundred years old, would require a lot of work. The Dutch couple who owned it had started renovations but weren’t able to see it through.

The watermill sat empty for seven years, save for some rats and construction materials that had been left behind.

“It was kind of like Pinocchio, Gepetto’s workshop. It had a lot of the materials for building, tools, and things that were going to be used for the build, which was huge for us coming with nothing,” Drew said.

But as much as they loved the watermill, the scale of the work required to restore the property was daunting, so they continued looking for another place for the next two years.

“We searched all over the country for anything that was a little bit easier, but just as inspiring,” Brittany said. “None of the other properties throughout those two years of searching did it for us.”

In the end, the charm of the abandoned watermill was too hard to resist, and they finally bit the bullet.

In the mountains

The couple preferred to keep the amount they spent on the property — which spans about three hectares — private.

While foreigners are not restricted from buying property in Portugal, they had to be smart about the currency conversion rates since even a small fluctuation could mean thousands of dollars in difference.

“We watched that very carefully. And in September of 2022, the US dollar was worth more than the Euro. And so we were able to transfer a lot of money at that time to Europe,” Drew said.

The property is situated in the Monchique mountains, about 30 minutes from the southern coast. The nearest village is about 15 minutes away, while the closest international airport is about an hour’s drive away.

“It’s 7,000 people, so it’s kind of an agricultural village in the mountains with many cafés,” Drew said. From my understanding, the town was thriving in the ’70s and the ’80s, but a lot of the younger people have moved away to the cities.”

Living on-site

Over the past year, the couple has been slowly chipping away at renovating the property while living out of a van on-site.

“Before starting work on the land or the watermill, we found a level spot. We installed our Starlink satellite pole. We figured out how to pump water from the stream into the tank that fills our camper,” Brittany said.

While they’re relying on solar energy in their camper, they plan to connect the watermill property to the grid in the future.

“We want to do a hybrid system because, in the winter, we just want that assurance. There can be weeks of gray skies that won’t charge our solar panels,” he said.

Since the watermill is on a commercial licensed property, the couple must follow certain rules to convert it into a habitation license.

“One is that we can’t change the existing footprint of what was already approved,” Drew said. “So we can’t make the house larger. All we can do is go up and finish everything and then put in the electrical and water.”

The first major part of the work was fixing the leaking roof.

“When we first came here, it was just gushing down whenever it rained, and we were putting buckets everywhere,” Drew said.

Although the couple is working on the project full-time, they also have a team of contractors helping them out.

“We have a really strong expat community here,” Brittany said. “And every Friday, this community gets together. By gathering with them and asking questions or saying that we’re looking for roofers, we found a wonderful team of workers.”

She said that as much as the couple is excited to take on some renovation projects, certain tasks require technical skills that they lack.

“They built the roof, and they’re currently helping us finish the parts that we can’t finish,” she added.

Despite the watermill’s location in a relatively quiet area, the couple says getting the construction materials hasn’t been too complicated.

Part of it is due to the couple being able to speak a little bit of Portuguese, thanks to the language classes they’ve been taking twice a week for the past year.

Not only is it a sign of respect for the local people and culture, it also allows them to form friendships with the people they work with, Brittany said.

“Rather than being seen as a foreigner or something, it just really allows us to connect better with who we live around and who we hire,” she added.

Navigating the challenges of designing a large space

The couple’s biggest challenge so far was figuring out how to work with a larger space.

“The van, because it was 80 square feet and small, was very manageable for Brittany and me to do ourselves. This watermill project, we have to have other people involved,” Drew said.

It was very different from anything they’d done before, especially since they now had to coordinate a larger team, from finding the right contractors to managing project timelines, he said.

Additionally, designing the interior layout of the watermill is very different from that of a van.

“We’re used to living in such a small space and having one thing perform multiple tasks that having so much more space to build inside of feels hard,” Brittany said.

Now, Drew added, even the bathroom in the watermill is about the size of their van.

Despite the challenges of renovating an abandoned property, the couple says that they were prepared for the scale of the work.

A couple of months before they started the process of purchasing the watermill, Drew’s parents’ home in Fort Myers, Florida, was devastated by Hurricane Ian — and the couple returned to help with clean-up efforts.

“And that hurricane work prepared us for the watermill work because there are days where I’m like, oh, there’s nothing worse than shoveling gravel or whatever we’re doing here,” Brittany said. “And he goes, ‘remember the hurricane?’ And I’m like, ‘oh, never mind.'”

Big projects take time

The couple says they hope to be done with the watermill in another year, hopefully before Christmas.

They have advice for those interested in similar projects: Find a comfortable place nearby to live during the renovation process.

“Whether it’s a camper van or a rented place in the village or nearby town, I wouldn’t go more than a mile out. I’ve heard that that can be extremely inconvenient,” Brittany said.

Living onsite has been ideal for them because their contractors tend to show up before 8 a.m. most mornings, she said.

“We know when anybody comes and goes and they can ask us questions related to the project,” she added. “We like being hands-on.”

Whenever they’re frustrated with their progress, Drew says they try to remind themselves that big projects like this take time.

“I think also once you set your mind to something and really commit to it, it clears your focus and gives you purpose,” he added. “It’s amazing for us to watch something transform right before our very eyes with each week, each month that goes into the project.”

Have you recently built or renovated your dream home? If you’ve got a story to share, get in touch with me at [email protected].