From the beginning with SPOR: he went from the village to the block, but returned years later because he lacked the freedom of the yard

Elena Santos grew up at home, in a village near Bucharest. She went to high school in the city, but there she was called “peasant”, “gasculita” because she came from the country. She felt somewhat ashamed of her origins and the way she lived with her family, which was very different from the apartment life of her classmates. So her dream was to eventually move out of there.

“I wanted to buy an apartment, to run away from this concept of the country,” she says.

Which he did in the end, but he soon discovered that apartment life didn’t suit him. And in the end, he still ended up living in the country, but now he appreciates things differently.

It is, in fact, the story she told briefly for her entry in the contest “From the beginning with Spor”, the project through which we try, together with Policolor and SPOR, to find out what makes people leave the city in then move to the country.

“It’s a history with many twists and turns,” says Elena. When he started working in the hotel industry, he came into contact with cruise ship recruiters. She went to the interview, got a contract and went to work, thinking about her long-dreamed-of apartment, which she was only able to buy after the second contract – in Militari, to be close to her parents. Also on cruise ships, where she was away for almost nine years, she also met her husband, who was born in Portugal. She brought him to Romania, introduced him to her family and, for a while, they moved together to Bucharest.

Their house was the first in the area, and at first they were the only ones among the community dogs and cuckoos

“When the first child appeared and we were already living in the apartment in Militari, it was very difficult for us. First of all, in the summer we were suffocating, we no longer had the freedom of the yard, we no longer had, look, this breeze from the trees,” she recounts. So they once again began to consider the possibility of moving to the yard.

They were the first to start building in the area

Elena’s parents offered them an agricultural land in the village of Roșu, right next to Bucharest, which they transferred to urban land. “Our piece of land was the first to be built on in this whole area. It was the first house, we were crazy to live here,” she recalls. They had nothing around them, they were basically in the middle of nowhere, and their only friends were the owls and the community dogs. They started building the house in 2006, and at the end of 2007 they moved in, after the second child was born and the ground floor – the bathroom and the kitchen in particular – were ready.

“We stubbornly installed the parquet ourselves, we stubbornly installed the chandeliers ourselves, installed the rest of the tiles ourselves. I learned everything on my own skin and that’s why today I’m also an influencer in the home and garden area, because I made a lot of mistakes and redid them,” explains Elena, who has a community of almost 5,000 people on Facebook.

The house now has a footprint of over 200 square meters and 12 rooms, including a living room on the ground floor and one on the first floor, seven bedrooms – three for the three children and one matrimonial – a living room with open space dining and kitchen and two bathrooms. They invested 170,000 euros in the construction, at least in terms of the ground floor with everything furnished and the floor made in gray, that is, the first plaster and a single screed.

They mixed several styles and merged the new with the old

“There are a few mixed styles, but we found a harmony and we feel good,” Elena describes the arrangement.

She took elements from the Iberian-Mediterranean area, as she calls it, that is, the one where her husband comes from, which she interwoven with modern accents and some boho, her favorite style. Many of the pieces of furniture are brought from the apartment in Militari and refurbished, some are new, and some are made by them, from recycled materials from the construction. What the dining table actually looks like, for which they used couches instead of legs.

No matter how spacious the house is, the outdoors is Elena’s greatest pleasure. At the block she felt like she was in a box, she lacked freedom, she felt suffocated by the walls. “Here, I open the kitchen door and walk out in my bare feet right here on the lawn and it’s different, it’s a different energy,” she says. Even though the village of Roșu has been built in the meantime and, from the village, it has started to look more and more like a city, her yard is full of greenery, because she likes to surround herself with plants.

Court brings Elena the greatest satisfaction