demolition…

demolition…

by | Jun 2, 2023 | Renovation

We’ve thought long and hard about how much current renovation we want to do in our Istrian stone house, as it is imminently going on the market, as we have plans for a whole new adventure. However, with the demolition and clearance of the small stone cottage behind the main house, and the construction of our beautiful new, white, rendered garden wall, we have to think about the practicalities of the access to the new rear garden.

Currently. to get to get to the rear of the house, you have to walk along the newly gravelled side access road. Not a huge problem, and this road is only used by us and one neighbour, but it still doesn’t feel quite right that there isn’t an access from the house. So, at the start of this week, we discussed with our builder the possibility of enlarging the living room window which overlooks the rear of the house, and installing French doors, and having a concrete platform and steps down, into the garden, built. Not much ever happens here very quickly – you have to have lots of patience  – so we were expecting a good few weeks to pass before we even got a quote for the work. How wrong we were on this occasion!

Quote in the next day. Agreed. And, Wednesday evening spent moving furniture away from the window and re-configuring the living room, so that plastic sheeting could be put up, for the work to commence the next morning…

Very little happens quickly here. It’s just something you have to get used to. Days can often drift by between discussing a job and it actually starting. It all usually depends on availability of materials. Or what other jobs the builder may have committed to. Or the weather – sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold, sometimes too windy, sometimes there may be a threat of rain. Or it’s a public holiday – and if that falls on a Wednesday or a Thursday, definitely discount the next couple of days, as a long weekend will always be had. Or the builder just goes AWOL. They always return, just maybe not when you expect them. So this speedy turn of events has taken us by surprise. At the beginning of the week, we still had a wall and a window and only the start of a plan. Now we have a huge hole in the wall. Although, we have to say, it has been the neatest demolition job we’ve ever experienced, with not a speck of dust inside the house, although much Istrian stone once again, back in the garden…

Our job this weekend is to begin the sourcing of the French doors. We’ve been scouring the internet and know exactly what we want – the challenge now is to find somewhere that sells them, and help us to realise something like the beautiful image below…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

garden wall construction begins…

garden wall construction begins…

by | Apr 29, 2023 | Renovation

Having lived for six years now with the view out of our living room window being the small stone house we purchased from a neighbour, things are going to be looking very different, very soon. The vine covered, tumble down house has been demolished, the boundaries of the land clarified, the foundations in and the wall, constructed of concrete blocks standing at well over a metre now, with more height still to be added. The “garden”, inside the wall, is currently an absolute mess – a mix of rocks and stones and the thick red, clay like soil, we have around here. It’s also on an incline. Looking out from the house, the wall to the left is lower in height than the wall to the right. So, we’ve had to address this and we’ve had to consider :

  • do we want it to be levelled and lose height on the right hand side of the garden? This would need to be built up, rather than digging out on the left hand side, as we’d then be digging lower than the foundations. We probably should have addressed this before the work started, but it was difficult to see the incline, and so it needs to be addressed now.
  • or, do we create a garden on two levels, higher on the left and lower on the right connected by concrete steps?

We’ve decided that the second option will give us a more unusual garden and so we’re going with that. It will inevitably add to the overall cost, as we hadn’t factored in this kind of design, but we’re in it now, and so we want to do a proper job, rather than making do to save a few euros. We think that the ground level of the garden will be concrete to give us a solid base, and the steps will also be concrete – wide and shallow treads so that they are more of a feature than just functional steps. The higher level, which will get the most sun, will then be covered in sanded and treated scaffold planks – of which there are more than a few being used for the construction, so we’ll repurpose them – and the lower level will be covered in white stones, with the steps being painted white. Overall, we’re thinking rendered walls, painted white, with white stones, timber, natural style furnishings, structural plants in pots, and perhaps a climbing honeysuckle or bougainvillea. However, we’re still a few weeks away from plumping up the cushions on the new sofas and chairs – currently housed in our bedroom, as we spotted them at a bargain price and with only one set left, had to buy there and then. But, it’s definitely coming on…

Scaffold planks which be sanded and treated to create a decked area for sunbathing and general catching of rays…

Day to day, because we’re living on top of it all, we feel we don’t see much progress. But, looking back on photos, it’s clear that real progress is being made and we’re getting closer to the Secret Garden. And, perhaps a new owner..,

the start of the garden wall…

the start of the garden wall…

by | Apr 28, 2023 | Renovation

So, with the demolition of the small stone house of the way, and our boundaries having been established way back in 2020, and the securing of a local builder, we felt that finally we were on a bit of a roll. The guys who had demolished the house, agreed to also dig out the trenches for the concrete foundations. They were provided with all of the documentation relating to the boundaries – which had explicit measurements for each section of the proposed wall – and most of the original metal stakes were still embedded in the rich, red clay soil, therefore giving even more guidance for the area to be dug out. Knowing the obsession with boundaries in these parts, we advised that we wanted the trench to be dug WITHIN our boundary. Only by a matter of centimetres, but sufficiently enough that it could be seen that we were not edging onto anyone else’s land. Although no-one else here would give away even a millimetre of land, we figured that a small loss in this way, would ultimately prevent any future disputes over miniscule pieces of land. And, we then left the guys to it. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, quite a lot, as it turned out…

In a *helpful* turn of events, one of our neighbours decided to assist the guys digging the trench, and use a can of red spray paint to demarcate the boundary lines. Now, spray paint is used here, by surveyors to pinpoint where stakes will be hammered in, or where there is a corner point point, for example. Not however, to mark out the actual boundary – what with spray paint not being very accurate a measure and all. And of course, another neighbour spotted the rather fat, wobbly red lines and declared that work must stop and a surveyor return to mark out the boundaries.

Now, we realise that anyone reading this from anywhere other than our current particular part of the world, might just be thinking, why didn’t they just tell the neighbour to sod off and continue with the work? The answer – it would have come back to bite us, because – and we cannot stress this enough – boundaries are more important than, seemingly, life itself. We also hadn’t spotted the Playschool red lines ourselves, because with all of the demolition and digger work, and open trenches, it was pretty difficult to actually access the site. And, so, we really felt we had no option other than to get the surveyors back out. Thankfully, we now know these guys quite well, and despite being busy, they got the urgency of the situation – builder on standby – and came out the very next day.

There is actually a very happy ending to this particular saga, for us. Maybe not so much for the red spray painter. Whether by accident or design, his spraying of the line between his and our land, was found to be very, very erroneous. His red line was about half metre inside our land – meaning he would have gained a sizeable chunk of land, if the other neighbour hadn’t insisted on the boundaries being re-confirmed. And, we’d probably never have known that we’d lost a sizeable chunk. But, all’s well that ends well, and he probably didn’t even know he was so far out with his measurements…

So, with a second set of identical boundaries now in place, and the trenches re-dug, the concrete was finally poured in for the foundations.

It’s taken what feels like forever, to get here, but if there’s one thing we have learned, it’s that in Istria we need to have patience and resilience and not be too affected by setbacks. A couple of weeks on from the foundations going in, we now also have what is beginning to look like a wall, which will afford us privacy and enable us to create the secret garden we’ve always wanted. And, of course, it has meant that other ideas have been added to the mix, including the knocking out of our living room window and having vintage style (if we can source them!) French doors installed, with steps down into the garden. Working on this plan right now, so we shall see what emerges over the next couple of weeks.

What we'd like - sadly without the sea view...

What we’d like – sadly without the sea view

 

 

 

 

 

hallway reno

hallway reno

by | Nov 28, 2022 | Interiors

Not all renovation projects need to involve demolition and mess and heavy tools and living with dust and dirt. I like to think that’s all kind of behind us – at least for now, but we never say never. These days, our renovation projects are quite small scale, very sedate, quite tidy and always done by us. It’s a nice position to be in, in the journey of our home. I quite like not having to haul the Henry hoover up (or down) three floors to get rid of thick layers of dust and plaster. These days, a bit of a tickle with a damp cloth, seems to be what’s involved in reno clean up.

Our upstairs landing has always been a bit of nothing space. We have tried, over the years, to make it into something, but nothing has ever really felt quite right. Until now, and I think we’ve finally achieved what we’ve always wanted, but not really known that we do. It now ties together the upstairs floor, and rather than just being a space to walk through, it’s almost become a room of its own.

Floating shelving has been fitted in the corner outside the main bedroom. We don’t have a socket in the hallway – something on the “to-do” list – and so we have to think about lighting. The two wooden slatted lamps are perfect as they are battery operated and on timers, meaning we have lovely shadows cast across the landing, when it’s dark. The two copper Moroccan style lanterns were bought a few years ago, and now seem to have found their home, after being fairly nomadic. These lovely little baskets are the perfect storage place for batteries for the lamps and tealights for the the lanterns.

The wooden floors throughout the house are painted a very deep navy, and walls are all white. The ceiling is very high with original beams, which we painted a very soft grey to match the woodwork, so the overall feeling is now of space. Despite there only being one window, it’s a very light and airy part of the house, but we’ve created a more wintery cosy feel with the addition of big, thick mustard coloured rugs. The wall where the window is, is still natural stone, although completely cleaned up and painted white. I’m at that stage with our house, where I’m kind of over the original stone work and depending on how much longer we are here, plans are being made to plaster all walls. However, they’ve not been plastered yet, so in order to hide away the stones, we’ve hung floor length sheer, muslin drapes. These don’t block out any light, but add softness, which I think was originally missing. The addition of a mustard yellow Moroccan leather pouffe adds a little bit more interest – and helps create a little Moorish corner in our home.

 

 

 

 

 

an anniversary…

an anniversary…

by | Oct 17, 2022 | Renovation

Sunday 16th October 2016 saw us meeting up with the couple who we were buying our Istrian home from, and staying over in the house. With hindsight, all a bit bizarre. But then, not much about this adventure has been normal, so I guess we started off as we were meant to go on. It was a bright early autumn day, still warm us for us to initially meet up for lunch in Novigrad, and sit outside the restaurant, eating fresh fish, overlooking the Adriatic. It was also the day of the Chestnut Festival in Oprtalj – our hosts took us there, but to our amazement, this medieval hilltop town, which we are now so familiar with, was so packed we literally could not get a parking space. So, we headed off to the house.

Yesterday, six years later, the weather was exactly the same. And the Chestnut Festival was happening again, in Oprtalj. This time though, we didn’t even bother setting off for the festival as we knew how busy it would be, and unlike six years ago, our living room was just too far too comfy to even contemplate leaving. And, for avoidance of doubt, the “Before” is on the left…

Remembering that I took a lot of photos of the house on 16th October, I’ve spent part of today re-photographing the exact shots. I have thousands of photos of the house, but thought it might be quite nice to see the actual shots, juxtaposed against the “now” photos. Especially as there’s every chance we’re about to embark on the next round of renovation. So, the full Then & Now coming up soon…