SOLUCIONES

Preguntas elementales

1. 1 year and 3 months.
2. 9 days.
3. No, he’s taking a vacation.
4. No, he isn’t.

- La Mansión del Inglès is in France today, and here with John in his wonderful country house. John, how long have you and Val had this house?
- Erm, we’ve had it about er…a year and three months now, since we first saw it.
- And what have you done to it structurally..er.. inside the house?
- Structurally inside the house basically we’re trying to take most of the house apart, erm…and put it back to its original state.
- I see. Have you done all the…all the work yourself?
- No, erm unfortunately we had a builder come in for nine days,…erm…after that fact we decided we would do all of the work ourselves.
- And what is there still left to do on the house?
- Well, it depends what your imagination runs to really.
- Uh huh. Have you got any plans for next month for example?
- Erm..for next month no we don’t have any plans, we’re taking a bit of a vacation for the next month as we’ve been working very hard for the last twelve.
- John, this sounds like an incredibly big project that you’re..you’re doing at the moment, what would you say to people erm…considering doing something like this, restoring an old property?
- Well, erm..I wouldn’t take anything on that was too…too big,..erm.. too much of a concept, unless you really have a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of energy to do it. Erm.. I mean there are many things you’re gonna run across, obviously it also runs into a lot of expense when you take on a huge project like this, …erm..and…
- Are you afraid of making mistakes?
- No I’m not afraid of making mistakes, I can always take the mistakes apart and re-do them again.
- Well that’s very sound advice. Thank you very much John.

    Vocabulario

to take (s.t.) apart = desmontar
to put (s.t.) back = devolver a su lugar
state = estado
run across = encontrar
to restore = restaurar
to take (s.t.) on = cargar, aceptar
re-do = do again
sound advice = good advice
to run to = extenderse a, subir a, ascender a (…it depends what your imagination runs to – depende a donde te lleva tu imagiación)