CASASOLANA

Casa Solana · restored estates · Andalucía

Ruins, given years.

We are a studio of two. We buy abandoned estates — a mill, a hacienda, a convent — and restore them over five to eight years in lime, chestnut and reclaimed tile. Three are finished. They are for sale.

El Molino Hacienda de la Vega El Convento

15:55 The arcade takes the afternoon.

The studio

Two people. Three houses at a time. Never a fourth.

Casa Solana is Inés Zambrano, restoration architect, and Tomás Leal, master builder. Since 2009 we have restored nine estates between Cádiz and Granada. We do not flip houses. We buy them ruined, keep them for years, fix what is actually wrong, and sell them when they are finished — not before.

The three below are finished. Each is sold with its full drawing set, its ledger, and a year of our time for whatever the house still wants to teach you.

  • Lime, never cement. A wall that cannot breathe rots from the inside. Every render, every joint: lime.
  • We survey in ink. Each house is drawn, crack by crack, before it is touched. Photographs show a moment; drawings show what must be done. That is why this page is drawn, too.
  • Old material first. Tile from Bailén, chestnut from the Alpujarra, oak copied from the four metres that survived.
  • Slowly. Five to eight years each. The years are what you are buying.

For sale · summer 2026

Three estates, finished.

Each house has an escudo — a tile pattern generated from the letters of its name; same name, same tile, always. The patio floors below are laid from it, tile by tile, the way ours were.

Estate I · olive-mill cortijo · Subbética, Córdoba

El Molino de las Aguas

6 bedrooms · 68 ha picual olive · press hall, stones in place · well & acequia rights · €2,400,000

El Molino de las Aguas: a long whitewashed olive-mill cortijo with a square chimney tower and an arched chestnut mill door, olive terraces rising behind it in morning light.
The mill from the threshing floor, nine in the morning. The grove behind is back in production.
as bought · 2018 finished · 2025

Restoration ledger

  1. 2018Bought as a ruin from the Ortega heirs. Press hall open to the sky; forty years of jackdaws.
  2. 2019The roof. 11,400 original tejas lifted, sorted, relaid over new chestnut. tile nº 4,181 — cracked, kept anyway
  3. 2020The 1970s cement render stripped by hand. Walls repointed in lime; they breathed within the month.
  4. 2021The well re-dug to 34 metres. The acequia cleared as far as the Bailón.
  5. 2022Press-hall floor in reclaimed clay from Bailén. The mill stones never moved; they never will.
  6. 2023Kitchen and four baths. Cabinetry in olive wood from our own prunings.
  7. 2024The grove pruned back into production. First harvest: 2,100 litres, early picual. bitter, green, correct
  8. 2025Finished. Seven years. We swept the patio and drew it one last time.

Estate II · courtyard hacienda · Carmona, Sevilla

Hacienda de la Vega

11 bedrooms · 14 ha vega land · double-galleried patio · chapel & tower · €3,900,000

The double-galleried patio of the Hacienda de la Vega: white arcades below, an oak balustrade above, eight potted orange trees on a marble floor, half the courtyard in deep shadow.
The patio at two in the afternoon: half sun, half shade, as designed. The marble was found under diesel-stained concrete.
as bought · 2017 finished · 2024

Restoration ledger

  1. 2017Bought from a cooperative that had parked harvesters in the patio.
  2. 2018The patio re-levelled; the original marble solería found under diesel-stained concrete.
  3. 2019Roof and both galleries. Sixty metres of oak balustrade copied from the surviving four. the four metres are on the north side — look up
  4. 2020The tower re-plastered in lime tinted with almagra, the old way.
  5. 2021Chapel stabilised and left as found: a quiet room.
  6. 2022Two kitchens — winter and summer — and the cool larder under the north gallery.
  7. 2023Eight patio orange trees, brought young from Palma del Río.
  8. 2024Finished. Eleven bedrooms around a floor of new-laid azulejos — the pattern on this page.

Estate III · hilltop convent · Montefrío, Granada

Convento de la Sierra

7 bedrooms · cloister of 12 arches · 90,000 L cistern · the hill itself · €2,900,000

The cloister of the Convento de la Sierra at evening: stone arches around a gravel garth, two young cypresses, amber light raking across lime plaster, the sierra hazy beyond.
The cloister at eight in the evening. The bells came back from a barn in Íllora; they ring by hand, not by clock.
as bought · 2019 finished · 2026

Restoration ledger

  1. 2019Bought from the diocese; empty since 1972. The bells were in a barn in Íllora.
  2. 2020The breach in the south wall closed with stone from the same hill.
  3. 2021Cloister: twelve arches, four re-cut, none replaced.
  4. 2022The cistern relined. It holds 90,000 litres of winter rain, as it did in 1680.
  5. 2023Cells joined in pairs: seven bedrooms, each with the sierra in the window. cell nº 3 keeps its door — the graffiti is under glass
  6. 2024The refectory became the kitchen. The reading pulpit stays.
  7. 2025The bells came home, re-hung on new oak stocks.
  8. 2026Finished this spring. The youngest of our houses, the oldest of our walls.

Viewings

Write to us

No portals, no agents. If you want to walk a house, write. We answer within three days — there are only two of us.

Osuna, summer 2026

Dear Inés and Tomás,

I would like to walk in the

My name is and you can write back to .