This couple bought a dilapidated farmhouse in Portugal. Here’s what happened next.

Based in the USA, Alan Andrew and his Belgian husband Vincent Proost decided to move to Portugal after purchasing an abandoned farmhouse in the Alentejo region in search of a vacation home. The couple met on a blind date in London in 2006 and lived together in the UK for about two decades before deciding to find a new home in Europe. Although neither of them had spent much time in Portugal before, Proost, an interior designer, felt that it could be the right place for them and suggested they spend some time exploring the country together.

“To be honest, I was leaning more towards something like Italy,” says Andrew. “I didn’t know Portugal very well.”

Traveling around the country for several months, they fell in love with Alentejo, located in the south of Portugal, 190 kilometers from the capital - Lisbon, and decided to look for a house there.

They inspected about 80 houses in the area before coming across a dilapidated farmhouse in the village of Figueira e Barros.

It turned out that restoring the house was impossible, and they realized that the project would be much bigger than they had planned.

“It had been abandoned for about 50 years,” Andrew explains. “The roof was completely destroyed. It was just falling apart. We knew we would have to build it from scratch.”

They realized that they would need to move to Portugal permanently to immerse themselves in the construction and fully dedicate themselves to taking care of the farm.

“It suddenly became a project,” Proost says. “And I said, ‘Okay, let’s move.’ So we moved. We built a house from scratch right before the pandemic, which was quite an adventure.”

After purchasing the property in the summer of 2019, they officially moved to Portugal, renting a nearby house while finalizing the sale and obtaining their residence permit.

But soon everything slowed down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many countries around the world, including Portugal, went into lockdown, and the couple had to leave their rental home, leaving them without a place to stay.

“All the hotels were closed,” Proost explains. “So we had to live in a tent for two weeks.”

Ultimately, they were able to settle in the barn, although at first there was no electricity until the renovation work began. Fortunately, the work in the barn was completed in just a few months, and they continued to live there while the main house was being built.

The original house was demolished in September 2020.

“For a long time, we couldn’t leave our village,” says Andrew. “And we just moved here, so we didn’t know anyone. It was practically just the two of us 24/7 on the farm. In a way, it was wonderful because we had a lot of work to do in the fields.”

The plot of land is 175 acres and includes about 1500 olive trees that needed to be pruned. They also had animals that needed care.

Andrew says that his new house is called Casa Baio and has its own swimming pool, five bedrooms, as well as a shed converted into a pool house.