@hdebmark
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Deborah & Mark Harmes
59
Female
member since Jul 10 2016
Australian
My skills
We are a happy and VERY experienced couple who have lived and worked in several countries over the last 22+ years. Mark is a professional builder/renovator, keen cyclist, and occasional artist. Deborah is a writer, professional photographer, former journalist, and excellent problem solver and organiser. We are leaving Australia permanently once our house is sold and will be looking for a new country in Europe to call home!
Languages Spoken
English (Mother Tongue) French (Medium)Full CV / Resume
After living and working in Scotland, England, Germany, and Normandy in 2011-2012 and then the Midi-Pyrenees of France from mid-2012 through early 2013, we left France in 2013 to move back to Australia. Mark was registered in France as an Auto Entrepreneur and worked as a Multi-Trades Builder. I obtained my Carte de Sejour and was a legal resident of France.
PHOTO GALLERIES ONLINE that show a range of our skill-set are at AD LIB ARTISANS --
MARK:
Mark has been in the construction industry for over 20 years and is a well-regarded tradesman in Australia, France, England, and Scotland -- restoring/renovating/decorating houses and commercial buildings for a living. Mark’s skillset includes carpentry, painting, decorating, plastering, general construction, tiling, some plumbing and electrical installation, some stone work, and some roofing. He has also built decks, pergolas, and exterior structures for quite a few of our clients.
Mark built our 5-star energy eco-residence in Central Victoria in Australia in 2009 -- a house that we later sold so that we could begin our 2010-2013 travels. New photos of the current 2015-2016 renovation in Australia will be added soon.
Whilst living in the Midi-Pyrenees in France, Mark worked permanently as a Multi-Trades Builder and written references are available upon request. Mark has also decorated or renovated private homes and businesses in Australia, England, Scotland, France, and Germany.
DEBORAH:
Deborah is a writer (currently working on a new book), photographer, public relations freelancer, voiceover and narration artist, book and manuscript, editor, occasional artist, and champion insomniac. My skillset includes the creation of advertising brochures and public relations materials for both registered charities and commercial organisations in many countries, research and written grant proposals for non-profit charities and arts organisations, and formulation of questionnaires as part of grant research.
My photography sells through my agents in the UK and New York to advertising agencies, travel companies, and book manufacturers worldwide. In addition to editorial photography, I am available to photograph events, real estate, tourism sites, and personal headshots or portraits for your own sites or advertising requirements.
You may see examples of Deborah's work at my commercial and portfolio site --
If you have a backlog of images to scan or itemise or colour correct, the computer that I travel with has all of the editing software necessary to create an image archive for your personal or business use.
Do you have excess items that you need to sell off? Did you purchase too many building supplies for your renovation? Are you ready to shed your old furniture and refresh your home or business with a whole new look? Or did you 'inherit' possessions from a relative that you'd like to dispose of? I am quite a champion Ebay seller since I take detailed photos of the items, measure them carefully, and create wonderful written descriptions. Recently I was quite successful at helping a client in northern France to thin out her inventory of World War II memorabilia.
ALSO -- if your primary business is making art or craft items, I can help you with a photographic inventory of your goods to upload online.
AS A COUPLE --
If you have a house sitting or business sitting assignment, we have ample references that would allow you to leave us on our own to quietly and competently do the repairs/renovation/redecoration in your absence. And you can come home to a 'refreshed' home or business.
About Me
We are a happy, healthy, educated, well-travelled, multi-skilled, non-smoking couple who enjoy interacting with people from many countries and cultures. Currently in Australia, we have just finished renovating a 1950 house that we purchased last year. Once the house is sold, we are hoping be back in Europe by the end of October. Fingers crossed that it will be sooner!
We are looking for interesting assignments that actually use our skills and experience and suit our mature outlook on life. We are both professionals with many years of business experience behind us, so I’m sure you’ll understand that we are not interested in the backpacking lifestyle of a 20-30 year old who does gardening or unskilled renovation.
We DO NOT PLAN to return to Australia once we leave in 2016, so we'll be looking for a PERMANENT place in Europe to settle down and call home. We’ll travel through several countries and assess the possibilities along the way through a mix of paid work and volunteer work. We are very open-minded about whether we end up in a city, a town, or a small village as long as it has good services and easy access to the culture and history of a larger European city.
If you find our skills useful or you know of friends or business associates who could use Mark's building and renovation talents or my writing, editing, marketing, and photography skills for permanent employment, you may be assisting us in finding our next home!
ANIMALS: We both love animals and are just fine with house sitting assignments that include pet sitting or with simply being around pets that are in residence at various hosts’ homes. We are not familiar with the care of farm animals, so we would never mislead anyone into thinking that we had any sort of competence in that area!
HOBBIES: Mark’s hobbies/interests include cycling (including a bit of cycle repair and maintenance), tai chi, building furniture, and outdoor sculpture. Deborah loves photography, reading, painting, and art and design.
We both love long rambles through art museums and galleries and are always up for a good rummage through the markets, brocantes, and antique shops in Europe. And we are keen on reusing and repurposing materials, refreshing old furniture, and doing a variety of craft-work. If food processing is something you would like to do, we've loved making chutney and jam for the last several years and we have a list of chutney recipes in the laptops that we travel with!
THE FINE PRINT and DETAILS:
To make us all feel more relaxed about the process, we ask that you please let us know how many hours per week you expect, what are the living arrangements for accommodation, and are all meals included in our stay with you -- or will we be provided with housekeeping and grocery money and doing our own cooking. We are absoluy FINE with doing that!
We will be travelling between locations in our own van and will be arriving with comprehensive travel and health insurance. We both have current driving licenses and we have driven both left-hand drive cars (USA and Europe) and right-hand drive cars (UK, Australia, New Zealand). I am creating an EXCEL spreadsheet of s so that we may travel from place to place in a logical and cost-efficient manner instead of criss-crossing back and forth across Europe.
We generally operate on a 20-ish hours over 4 or 5 days week unless there is a big 'push' like a product launch or move-in date and then we can adjust our schedule. Please do take the time to read our profile compley so that you can match our skills to your requirements. It saves us all a lot of time.
Mark is quite fit and sturdy. Since it is his actual career, he is able to do a variety of building and renovating tasks including building custom furniture. We are both over 50 now and of the two of us, Deborah moves a lot more slowly now and no longer participates in any construction projects except as a designer and project manager or occasional assembler of furniture and detail painter.
Heavy lifting and hours of gardening or cleaning are not amongst Deborah's talents on offer. BUT -- slow and gentle work with photography, computer work, public relations, social media, writing or blogging, arts, crafts, sewing, or small spurts of cooking, plant watering or tree and shrub pruning are all JUST FINE.
If you are ONLY INTERESTED in Mark's building work, I am happy to travel as a 'tag along' and allow him to just get up early and get on with your renovations or construction. I always have a book manuscript, photo editing, or magazine article on the go -- so no, I won't be bored if I am not physically participating in your particular project.
I will be posting all along the way at my site A Wanderful Life – -- and I have several thousand Twitter and folks that follow my writing every time I post a new entry on that site. So if you have a tourism site such as holiday cottages, gites, a ho, a travel company, tour groups, a language school, a museum, workshop, or café -- you will certainly be getting extra publicity with my online reports and photos.
Looking forward to new friends, new countries, and new adventures!!!
