A very welcome surprise

Tags

AMEX, Garden, Iriya, Israel, Planning Permission, property, Shopping, tiles

I wasn’t planning on adding a post for at least another week as very little has happened but when I opened my American Express (AMEX) bill I got a nice surprise. More on that later.
During the week the electrician has done some (but not very much) work.

Tiles – All the rest of the tiles will be delivered tomorrow.

Garden Shopping – We have ordered and paid for a Keter Composter which we should be getting within the next couple of days.

2 things that I have previously forgotten to mention. The first is that when the builders were using concrete in the basement they also used it to straighten and clean up the walls in the garage. The second is that there is some damage on the lintel above the garage. I assume that this was done by the skip company and that it will be fixed at some point by the kablan as that is his responsibility.

AMEX. This was originally my bane (I have not written about it here before as it was a pure financial decision – but it appears to have become relevant). I decided that I wanted a credit card that gave me some kind of benefit in kind as I would be spending a lot of money on it. I looked around and came up with AMEX as a good option. The negative to start with was the fee – but when I phoned them up I found that they have a fee-free deal with the company that I work for (ask either AMEX or your own company if relevant). I opened the card and tried to use it. It refused me. I found out that I only had a limit of 4000NIS – not even enough money to pay a single bill that I took the card for. I tried to contact AMEX on the phone – but I could never get through. The system (Hebrew only) said they would contact me within 24 hours – and they rarely did. I tried by the contact form on the website – and they generally contacted me back (eventually) and generally could not help me as they hadn’t received a form from my bank. Eventually I’d had enough, so after my bank had finally sent the form I sent a message (through the website) stating that if a manager did not contact me within 24 hours I would cancel the card. I received a call by an English speaker within the 24 hours and explained why I wanted the card and my expected expenditure during the following month. I explained that I have a strong history with AMEX in the UK and that I was requesting a limit of a quarter of that which I used to have. They explained that the history is irrelevant as AMEX in Israel is actually a franchise owned by Mastercard and that they cannot see historical records of customers from outside the country. They understood where I was coming from and said that as I had no history with them I would need to provide them with 3 months of bank statements to prove that I could afford the limit I requested and then they would then look into honouring my request. They got back to me within a few hours and gave me a limit that would easily cover my normal needs – but did not cover the one big payment that I needed to pay off the tiles. For this they had pre-approved the payment as a one-off payment outside my limit. They knew both the shop name and the amount I was going to pay. This covered my requirements.
During Chol Hamoed I got my statement for the “big month” and got my nice surprise. AMEX in Israel tends to give you small discounts on certain shops or from some unknown other criteria. I knew this from my first (very small bill). When I looked at the bill I saw the “big” payment and then realised there was a comment next to it… They had given me a discount which was effectively a 3.5% discount on that specific purchase. This was a surprisingly large amount of money. I did not put the payment on interest free “Tashlumim/payments” so I do not know if I would have got the discount if I had. This is a large discount – enough to easily buy an iRobot (one of my “not required” wants) if I wish to. We also got given AMEX points which I can spend as well. Just to add a cherry on the cake – a few days later my wife took the kids to the cinema and got an AMEX BOGOF deal which saved 38NIS. OK that one wouldn’t break the bank – but was still nice anyway.

That’s it for now – will write more in a week’s time once I have some idea (hopefully) about the planning permission.

Regards,

Adam & Joelle.

Advertisements

Time for a pause

Tags

air conditioning, bath, ceiling, concrete, Contractor, costs, Design, Electricity, floors, Garden, Home, Israel, lighting, payment, plumbing, tiles

The builders do not work on either Jewish or Muslim festivals – therefore there will be lots of breaks in work over the next few weeks (Rosh Hashona, Sukkot and Eid).
This is the reason for the pause – and nothing else…..but that is life.

On the surface it looks like nothing has happened over the last week, but when we dig a little deeper we can see some big leaps forward. I will start in the basement and then work my way up.

Electrics – All the cables for the light fittings have now been installed in the basement. All holes made in the walls for the cables have also been filled in. Work is starting upstairs in the house but it is not yet obvious.

Plumbing – This is the obvious bombshell. The first bath is installed and the shelf next to the bath has been created. The bath is on a metal trundle (easier than making your own as I used to do in the UK and much better than the standard in Israel where they normally just cement the bath into position. It is very exciting to see such an obvious step forward. I was also discussing with Yaniv (the Kablan / Contractor) about the testing of the water systems. First of all – the testing of waste/soil pipes is not required by Israeli law. Our kablan did this (we would have insisted anyway) by stuffing the pipe ends with rags and plastic bags and then filling it with water. They then confirmed the water was still in the pipe after a set amount of time. They also checked the joints for leaks during this testing. By law, there is a requirement to test the mains water and other water piping in the house. This has not been done yet – but will be done by a testing machine that creates the required pressure testing in the house.

Air conditioning – Kobi Mazganim (Mazganim means Air Conditioning) started – and maybe finished – laying all the pipes for the air conditioning in the basement yesterday. Apart from this, we made the decision to put the outdoor air conditioning unit for the basement on the wall in the basement “balcony”/garden. This decision was made as the roof was too far away from the units for them to work efficiently.

Mamad Door – Last week we were discussing with Tamar the option of swapping the Mamad door. She didn’t have an opinion but wanted to give us the option. I actually spoke in detail about this with the Kablan and although there are improvements in the new style doors – it is not required legally and the main changes will be aesthetic. It will also create more work in the basement as we would need to either lift the basement floor or drop the mamad floor to make it work properly. The final decision was simply to leave the door as it was – and not spend an unnecessary 3,500NIS.

Basement Floor – They have now covered all the floor plumbing with cement and have started putting stones on the floor as the basis upon which to start the tiling. I am not sure if there is another layer between the stones and the tiles – we will see tonight!

Basement Tiling – This is being started tomorrow. We can’t wait to see how this will change the whole look/feel of the basement.

And now on to the rest of the house. As you can imagine, the builders are working their way upwards – so the changes from now on are minimal.

Plumbing – The underfloor heating and hot water tank installation was supposed to be started yesterday. I will check up on this tomorrow.

Ceilings – In the main level they have started to build the dropped ceilings which will be used as a feature as well as for lighting and hiding the air conditioning units.

Photographer – last week a photographer came in and took photos of the house. This was not requested by either us, Tamar (the designer) or by Yaniv. We do not know who did this – or why, but we are assuming that it was done by the Iriah (local council) either for Arnona/Council Tax purposes or for building specification requirements. We hope it is for no other reason.

Money – Contracts with constructors tend to have multiple payments throughout the project. The first is always a fairly large down payment which covers the initial materials and the cost of the workers from the start of the project. My second payment (of 30%!) is due once the walls, plumbing and electricity is completed. This will be probably be done somewhere between Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Now we have also paid for the doors, tiles, plumbing fixtures plus deposits on all almost all the work being done (paid underfloor heating supplier and air conditioning person as well)

Garden – Very little has happened with this lately – on my other blog is a picture of the wood pile if you are interested! – Tamar has spoken to the gardener and they have confirmed a design. The gardener will be sitting with us to tell us the costs involved (I also hope we will see the design as well – but this wasn’t mentioned) and also with Yaniv to finalise the position of both electricity and water points in the garden. Supposedly, the only area that is still open for discussion is the smoker. We will probably build the smoker over the tree stump that we could not move as the roots went too deep.

Shmitta – Obviously due to shmitta, none of the garden work will include any planting (or even any trimming). All the cleaning up work has been done. The garden work will simply be the laying of fancy concreted areas (done by Yaniv), planters for after shmitta and the position of the new trees that will also be planted after shmitta. We are also planning on buying a composter (on way home from work today) as an efficient and “respectful” way of disposing produce with “Kedushat Shvi’it”.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year,

Adam & Joelle

Consolidation

Tags

air conditioning, aquarium, Climbing plants, Contractor, costs, Design, doors, Electricity, Fence, Garden, Home, Israel, Kitchen, Planning Permission, plumbing, Shopping, synthetic grass, tiles

Over the last week I cannot put my finger on any exact major accomplishment, but lots of work and lots of decisions were made. Have a look below and see if you can come up with a better title for this post than I have.

Planning Permission – The structural engineer finally sent the plans to Tamar who upon review found some mistakes. These were corrected and sent back to the Iriah. I was also told that there were a few changes to the house that were done without planning permission (so Israeli!) so in one place we are requesting a new door rather than enlarging a door where the door already exists!

Garden – This has now been completely cleaned up except for two small exceptions (the removal of both a single light fitting and a single flower bed (with very young trees in it). They have also removed all the old cement and tiles around the front door so that we can start this afresh.
We have probably decided on using a specialised and decorative concrete in certain areas in the garden instead of synthetic grass. As said before synthetic grass does not work for us – and being in the desert maintaining real grass is just a waste of money and resources for no real benefit (these are not play areas for the kids). The reason we are probably (rather than definitely) going with this solution is that it looks very nice in pictures – but we need to physically see it before committing ourselves to this solution.
The neighbour’s fence issues – we have decided (without discussing it with them) that we are going to put up a bamboo fence for them to see – and then put a net over our side of the bamboo and climb flowers over this. We really have to decide which climbers we are using, the main competitors at the moments are passion fruit (passiflora) and honeysuckle. The honeysuckle will grow slower (therefore probably easier to maintain, smell nicer and attract more bees, butterflies and other insects. The passiflora will grow very fast (complete walls in a year), does not have as nice a fragrance and produces a fruit that we generally do not eat (I will juice it to use as added flavour to water, juices, smoothies – or as ice cubes).

Electrics – The basement cables and back boxes have all been installed now. The electrician is starting on the main floor now.

Plumbing – The hot water and underfloor heating will be started on Sunday! The price for this has risen as we have changed from a standard heat pump to a heat pump with Inverter. The heat pump is from an American company called Spectrum.

Air conditioning – The units we took were slightly incorrect (a misunderstanding over which number represented which dimension) and there was a meeting between the aircon guy and Tamar to close all these little issues. I assume it has been done – and am waiting to hear confirmation.

Aquarium – The pipes between (the currently non-existent) aquarium tanks have been installed. This installation is now on a back burner until enough has been installed so that the tank will not be damaged during the work.

Basement (Tiles and Mamad) – All the tiles for the basement were delivered and will be installed soon (I think it will be the beginning of next week). I have been told that there will be a very quick and obvious “feeling” of nearing completion once the tiles are there.
We have been asked whether or not to change the mamad door. There is no requirement to do so – but the newer door will be easier to close and is much better at stopping air flowing around it. We have to decide whether to spend 3,500NIS on this door tonight!

That’s all for now. Until next week,

Adam & Joelle.

Snakes and Ladders

Tags

air conditioning, Alarm, Contractor, costs, Design, Electricity, fireplace, Garden, Home, Israel, Kitchen, Planning Permission, Shopping, Sound System

We were on holiday last week and came back to our rental apartment to find a dead snake in the back garden courtesy of our cat. We had a fairly positive week especially in the garden of the house – but with one major (time related) setback within the house – I felt like we were playing a large game of Snakes and Ladders. I am sure the symbolism came about due to the present our cat left us.

Let’s start with the garden and work our way inside. We played two gardeners off against each for the cleanup work (removal of 3 large trees, cleanup, pruning, rubbish removal etc) and got the price dropped by just over 20%.
The work started a week ago and was finished in the middle of last week. We now have fewer trees, a large pile of logs mainly for our fire and some dead peach for our smoker (to be). After this work the gardener, kablan and Tamar (designer) met up to discuss an overall basic plan for the garden and fences so that preparation work (more demolition for now by kablan) could be started. We met with the gardener Friday afternoon and went over the basic plan with him. Overall the plan sounds great but we will discuss it with Tamar to finalise it before the water and electricity parts are done in a few weeks time. The garden already looks so much better and that is without any work being done to improve the layout. The plan that we have will be executed in three parts. Part 1 will be pre-shmitta which was the cleanup, irrigation (to keep our trees alive) and preparation of areas so that we can add trees and our vegetable/herb garden straight after Shmitta. Part 2 will be done by the kablan whenever he gets to it (as it is not linked to shmitta). This includes laying out all the “Decking” areas although we will probably not be using decking but other materials (stone, tiles, fake grass etc). Part 3 is the planting of new trees, bushes once shmitta is over.
For our fences, we were hoping to do a netting with climbers on both sides. One neighbour has been very helpful – and has agreed to let us use the unused earth on his side to plant the plants with us paying for the watering. This will save us creating a new planting area and loss of space on our side of the fence. It will also be a lot cheaper. The other side (who was very happy with us for cutting down a large pine tree that was shedding needles into her garden) has said that she is not happy with this solution as it will create a mess when plants shed their leaves. We could build up the stone wall that already exists and put climbers on that. The problem is that being city born Londoners – stone just doesn’t look right as a fence. Fences should be wooden or hedges! We will find a solution that keeps our kids safely in our property and the neighbour happy.
One little story. The pine tree that our neighbour complained about was so difficult to remove that it alone took 3 days work and could not removed by crane as it broke the straps holding the tree. In the end it was removed slice by slice and the base (plus roots) have had to be left in the ground making our area slightly more complex to plan (as there are also 3 basement windows (called English Windows – even though there are very few basements in the UK as most of Southern England is clay!) that we cannot foul up.

Windows / Planning Permission. This was our “snake” for the week. The structural engineer has still not produced the paperwork that we need to apply for the planning permission to increase the size of many of the windows. This is despite him being nagged consistently for the last couple of weeks. Until we have this permission – the kablan cannot enlarge the current openings which prevents us from getting the window company to come and take the exact measurements so that they can order the windows. As the windows are coming from the States (Anderson Windows) they take up to 3 months to arrive. This is the one issue that may stop us moving in on time. We will be nagging the engineer tomorrow between the lunacy of being back at work after a week off.

Plumbing. Most of the waste pipes have now been replaced or put in for the first time. Most of the cold and hot water piping (including the toilets) have been laid. There is still another weeks work to do – but the majority of work has been done – the progress is slow and steady – but very clear.

Electricity. The plans have been finalised and the electrician will be starting within the next couple of days.

Lighting – Tamar was sending us photos of possible lights but we were not fully happy with them. Therefore we will be going shopping next week to make some decisions with the actual lights in front of us.

Kablan Extras. We still haven’t signed the contract – but it is slowly being added to as we make changes to the design (mainly the garden). We have also given Yaniv our English sockets, electrical backboxes and a catflap.

Multimedia – We have a new quotation from another supplier. The price is a lot better than the first one – but still too much. We need to get the price dropped – part of this will be done by not including our bedroom and that section of the garden. We also feel that the cost of the play room (surround sound etc) is more than is worth spending for a system that is just supporting a Wii and dvd’s – we will not even have standard tv channels or Blueray in this room.

Kitchen Electricals – we have ordered (but not yet paid for) our fridge freezer – and also added an extra freezer that will be used to store vegetables bought before shmitta year.

Air-conditioning. We have not yet signed the contract but we have paid for all the main units.

Alarm. We have said that we are going with this guy – but are waiting for bank details so that we can pay him some money to confirm we are taking him. He has provided us with a cheaper quote and is also looking into providing us with 3 (mains connected) smoke detectors and a Carbon Monoxide monitor to protect us from the fireplace. This is actually not a requirement in Israel which I assume is due to the fact that the standard trissim (blinds) are open to the outside of the property and therefore there is no issue with airflow and consequently no issue with incomplete combustion. We are all our trissim and this may cause us an airflow issue. We want to be safe (and alive).

Photos – We have been taking lots of photos throughout the process and after all the work has been completed I will be doing blog pages of each area in the house with photos showing the progress from start to finish.

We think that is all – so wish you a good night.

Adam & Joelle

Financially Speaking

Tags

air conditioning, Alarm, aquarium, bathroom, bedroom, Cameras, Contractor, costs, Design, doors, Electricity, fireplace, furniture, Garden, Home, Intercom, Israel, Kitchen, office, plumbing, Shopping, Sound System

Hi all,

I thought I would take a break from the detailed listing of all that we are doing and put the financial costs of this project down in a way that would be beneficial to you. I am obviously not going to tell you my exact costs – but I am going to break down each section into a percentage of the whole – and also calculate the cost of each section if the project cost 500,000NIS. This is not the cost – but it is a convenient number to work with!.

Before we get down to the nitty and gritty details there are a few points to notice:

• The cost of the Interior Designer probably brought our shopping costs down by close to the amount we paid for her work. She also got us good prices and appropriate suppliers for all parts of the project (so far). On top of that we couldn’t have done the work without her expertise
• We have some things on our list that you will think are pure luxury. But conversely we will have the same thoughts about your list
• I have only included items that I have prices for. I have put a list of unpriced items at the end of this article
• Remember that all preparation work is done by the contractor. So an example here would be that the total cost of the aquarium could actually be double the percentage written down – but the additional costs have been eaten by the contractor’s fee
• Where there is an (*) by the side of an item this is an estimated price. It means that we do not yet have a contract agreed as of the time of print.
• The quality of the items that we purchased are not the most expensive options – but we definitely didn’t go looking for cheapest options. We looked for what we liked and then made our decision based on what gave us the best value for money. We did not look at prices before making our short list
• I have almost definitely left something off the list of items to still be purchased. I am only human – but I will repeat this post when we move into the house and make sure that everything is included

Here is the expenses list…

… Are you ready for it?

Expense	% of whole cost	If 500,000NIS spent on project so far
Contractor/Kablan (including Garden Demolition, excluding interior demolition)	55.91	280,000.00
Tiles (*)	11.86	60,000.00
Air conditioning	6.51	32,500.00
Designer Costs (including Measuring)	6.37	31,500.00
House Demolition	5.08	25,000.00
Dudim + Underfloor Heating (plumbing done by kablan)	3.19	15,000.00
Doors	2.91	15,000.00
Plumbing Fixtures	2.37	11,500.00
Integrated Music (*)	1.69	8,500.00
Alarm (*)	1.22	6,000.00
Aquarium	0.81	4,000.00
Garden Floral Cleanup/Demolition	0.75	3,750.00
Structural Engineer	0.51	2,500.00
Video Intercom for front gate (*)	0.47	2,500.00
Camera System (4) to supplement Alarm (*)	0.34	1,500.00

The items that I have not included are:

BBQ, smoker and outdoor dining(outdoor entertainment)
Bedroom/office furniture
Carpentry
Fireplace
Garden fencing
Garden irrigation system plus planting
Garden landscaping
Kitchen costs
Moldings
Other surface and finishing materials (Caesar Stone)
Outdoor play equipment
Playroom equipment
Sofas & tables plus other furniture
Windows

As an aside, I have updated the Support Page with all our confirmed suppliers.
Hope this post is useful for you.

Adam & Joelle.

Shockingly planned

Tags

air conditioning, Alarm, aquarium, Contractor, costs, Design, doors, Electricity, fireplace, Garden, Home, Israel, Kitchen, Shopping, Sound System

Hi,

We have had a very busy couple of weeks. We will start with the plans. During the last couple of weeks Tamar has been working like crazy on the plans. Electricity, lighting, plumbing and tiling – as well as continuing with the carpentry. We went through the (very obvious) plumbing plans last week and approved them to be forwarded to Yaniv to start working on. We had 3 internet meetings (plus several phone calls) with Tamar covering tiling and electricity. These meetings took about 8 hours. The majority of the discussion was about socket placement, lighting, switches, TV, computer network and telephone points (even though we are not connecting a tv). This was complex and we want to get it right now. It took so much of our time last week that we named this blog after it. We have also been discussing moldings, cat flaps, doors, windows and curtains, kitchen cabinets, up-lighting, air-con, white boards for the kids to draw on, carpentry, drinks bar (between kitchen and lounge), stone fascia near the fireplace, the fireplace, the garden and sound systems. I am sure we have missed some – I will get to it on later blogs when we confirm / pay for it. Adam also walked through the house today with Tamar to confirm and try to visualise everything that we have discussed up until now.

Doors – Hermetix have confirmed that they can do the design we preferred as a single layer rather than stuck on to the door. This will remove the risk that any paint on the door will crack.

Air-conditioning – We have basically decided on everything we want, we just have to add one more air conditioning unit in the basement and try to lower the price as it is still a little too high. We are using a centralised Toshiba system in the house, but with the ability to turn on each of the units separately. In the basement we are using Gree units which are cheap but pretty high quality. They are supposed to be better than companies like Tadiran / Electra but slightly below Toshiba / Fujitsu / Mitsubishi.

Alarm – We have a design for the alarm and intercom systems. The video intercom will be for the front gate and will have video screens by the stairs near the kitchen and in the hall by the study upstairs. Generally the prices are ok, but a few areas of it are too high. We are receiving another quote from someone who has seen our quote. He has basically said that some of the prices will stay the same but others will drop, maybe significantly.

Sound system – We received a quote for an integrated sound system in the games room, the downstairs (lounge, dining and kitchen areas) and our bedroom and garden area. This was unbelievably expensive. We are getting another quote from someone else who is also good – but doesn’t have such market saturation at the moment. Once we get this we will decide whether we will stick with such a system – or just do something in the games room.

Contractor – Yaniv sent us a new quote (about 3 days ago) and we haven’t looked through it yet. It is nice to trust your contractor this much. So what has Yaniv done over the last week or so? He has built the platform for both of the fish tanks (one will have fish and the other will hold the pump, heater, filtration etc). I was very impressed with the quality of this base – considering it will NEVER be seen by anyone when it is completed. He has done lots of other little jobs like strengthening the areas around the windows prior to changing the sizes, closing in an area by the stairs, shrinking the fireplace, creating the space for the electricity cupboard and many other small preparations that I may not even be noticing. He has also started with the plumbing. This means that his plumber has entered the house and starting deciding where the pipes will be going as well as where the air conditioning drains will go as well. They have also started putting up the tanks for the toilets and opening up the main entry to the drains.

Shopping – we paid for the plumbing stuff (same shop as the tiles) and the toilets and other water points (showers, taps etc) have been delivered without us even knowing about it. I also took an American Express card to pay for all the shopping. I assumed that they would give me a reasonable limit, but as I have no history with them – they have given me the vast limit of 4000NIS – just over $1000! This is an American Express card. When I had an AMEX card in the UK it was literally limitless. I assume there was a limit but I had one month where I spent close to a whole year’s salary (from savings). I also planned to buy our oven and hood last week – but didn’t manage to. I am hoping to do this in the next few days.

Kitchen – we have done nothing for the kitchen except that we took delivery of our Tami4 today. This was such a pain. We arranged for them to deliver it between 4 and 6pm. So they came at 2.30. For Israel this is unheard of. They then asked me for my wife’s credit card and ID so they could deliver and install the Tami4, but she was out with the kids about an hour away in Jerusalem with her ID and credit cards and we had specifically told them when ordering that we didn’t need it installed as we were buying it for our new house early due to the great price we got through Joelle’s work. They were saying they couldn’t deliver it and I was saying that I couldn’t care less as it was purely their issue as they did not tell us that Joelle’s ID/card had to be shown at delivery. I told them that they could arrange another delivery at our convenience rather than theirs. In the end, they phoned my wife and talked her into coming home early which was a shame for the kids as they did not get to do all that they wished. At least they enjoyed the trenches at Ammunition Hill and making soaps at David’s Citadel. Unfortunately they did not get to the kotel – and it has been close to 3 years since they last went – the curse of living so close (but yet so far).

Gardening – We got the quote from the gardener. Tamar thought that it was too high so she has arranged for another gardener to come next week. When she realised that we are removing 3 large trees she changed her mind and decided that although the price was high – it wasn’t so bad. As an aside, I managed to make our new neighbour very happy by happenstance. She showed me today that our pine tree drops lots of needles into her garden and that she finds it very difficult to keep up with the mess. She asked me if I could think of a solution. I told her that we are getting quotes from gardeners to do work and that the work included removing that tree!

Will update with next week’s story soon,

Adam & Joelle.

On Rosh Hashana it is Written …..

Tags

air conditioning, aquarium, Buy home, contract, Design, Home, House, Israel, property, walls

Who will live and who will die.
Just over a week ago on Motsei Shabbat we spent about 30 minutes in mum’s room chatting about changes that we needed to make with her apartment as we found that we could not move the entry door as we had hoped. She was fine. At some point between then and the following morning my (Adam’s) mum passed away of an unknown cause. Every year on Rosh Hashana we pray/say/discuss that everything that is going to happen to us is decided on that day and that it is confirmed on Yom Kippur (or Hoshana Rabbah anyway), but how much do we actualise this and realise how much it actually affects us. It hit me very hard last week. My mum was so excited about moving into her own apartment whilst still being attached to and continuing contact with our family – and now we will not have this. I am not going to say anything else here about my mum as any words that I use will limit and belittle her in a way that is incorrect.

Life goes on and however we mourn we can’t live only in the past but also need to move forward and so I am continuing the blog to give any advice, support and laughs or ideas that may come about due to our experiences and mistakes. We had done quite a lot the first week since the previous blog, but since then we have just made some design changes to fit in with our changing circumstances.

I am going to start with the fish tank. We want a fish tank. It works out that the only place we can really put a fish tank is as a wall/barrier between the hallway/kitchen area and the sunken lounge. We spoke to an aquarium specialist (Uri) about 2 weeks ago. We agreed with having a freshwater tank with an outside sump. The tank inside will have a width of 45cm and a height of about 62cm (This height was chosen as this is the maximum height possible with Israeli glass and the cost of shipping glass dramatically increases the cost). The sticking point is the overall length of the tank. The specialist wants 3 metres and we are saying that is TOO ostentatious – and that is before we looked at the costs. We originally wanted about 1.3 to 1.5 metres. We told Uri to discuss the length with Tamar so that she can make the sizes fix up correctly with the overall design (safe cop-out and saves us making the decision). It looks like the final length will be around 1.4 metres and we will have to increase the size of the sump to compensate for this allowing us to have a very stable aquatic environment. We have prices for a 1.5 metre tank – these will need adjusting slightly but we do have an idea of the cost.

Air conditioning – As in the previous post – we have agreed on the type of air conditioning that we are using, but we have not finalised where all the air emitters and return flow units are going to be. We discussed options with Tamar and she is going to make a design relative to our discussions and we will take it from there.

Shopping – We were supposed to go and pay for the tiles/plumbing fixtures but this was delayed. We will aim to do this during the next week.

The downstairs apartment – We are now changing this into a rental unit. Therefore we are adding an English window instead of the electronic ventilation and we are leaving all other windows/doors the same size as they already are. The rooms with English windows will not have a lot of natural light – but they are in the basement. We have told Tamar to redesign this area appropriately. We also are going to change the tiles that we had chosen as they were expensive and there are other options that are also high quality but cheaper.

Garage – We are now not going to be including a garage door – but will have a section that is secure for tools.

Garden – We keep discussing that we need to include the garden design (even if we do not do it now) but we still haven’t started it. We do need to find time to start on this – fairly soon.

Kablan – The walls were almost up the last time we checked. We need to go in the next day or so to confirm that they are finished. Finally – the contract. We still haven’t signed one. This is convenient as we will now be making changes in the basement area. When the Kablan is back from his holiday he can recalculate the costs and we can take it from there.

That’s all for now,

Adam & Joelle

Contracts, Contracts, Contracts

Tags

appliances, contract, costs, Design, Dishwashers, Home, House, Israel, plumbing, renovation, taps

Another momentous week.
Let’s start with the fact that we have basically started the work (even though we wished to wait for the end of Ramadan). When I say start – the blocks for the interior walls turned up today – eventually. They were sent late and the truck sending them broke down on the way…. great start – but as we are paying a fixed price is doesn’t really matter to us.
So what work has been done. The builders have drawn out lines on the floor where the walls are going to be. We also had a structural engineer in the house. He has stated that almost everything we wanted to do will be fine – but there were a few changes that are needed. The biggest is that we will probably not be able to move the door in Mum’s apartment so we will need to re-think what will be happening with the kitchen. The second change is that there is a vertical supporting beam between two of the windows in the kitchen – so we cannot join them together to form one large window as wished. The engineer also stated that there are two vertical supporting beams between the corner and main windows of the lounge which looks out over the valley. We are hoping to extend the middle window to 3.2m wide (the largest standard size Anderson window of the type chosen). The only physical work that has been done is to check where these beams are. They opened one side to find the beam and from what I could see, extending the window should not be a problem.
The engineer also found a very small amount of supporting metal and concrete that needs to be replaced before it becomes an issue.

On top of this the only house related work has been in relation to contract and paying out money….
We are in the process of completing the contract with Yaniv (Contractor) all prices are agreed but we have to finalise exactly what we are doing – an example is that we decided not to build an “English” window in the store-room and we will be using electric ventilation running on a timer instead. This will save over 10,000NIS and will be better as we can’t accidentally forget to open the window for an hour during the week.
We are also looking through contracts for the hot water system and air conditioning. Having had plumbing training whilst between jobs in the UK, Adam was very specific about what he wanted. We are having under floor heating in the main floor and our bedroom. We are also using a closed water system (The water to be used is heated by water in a pipe running through the hot water tank – in Israel the standard is an open water system where the hot water in the tank is heated directly by the sun through collectors). We are still using solar energy as our main source of heating the hot water tank – but we are using a heat pump as the secondary source for the hot water tank as well as the only source of heat for the under floor heating. We have also designed the hot water to be pushed around the house in a full circle (circuit) both starting and finishing at the water tank. This will allow us to have instant hot water at the taps (without the normal 10-15 seconds of wasted water whilst waiting for hot water to arrive at the tap).
Air conditioning. Coming from the UK, we know less than nothing about air conditioning except that is expensive! In the main house we have gone with units built into both the ceiling and the carpentry units (in the dining area). For this system we are using a single Toshiba VRF system as the price has dramatically fallen for these units lately. For mum’s apartment we are using on wall Gree units which are supposedly the same sort of quality as Mitsubishi/Fujitsu without the same price tag.

That’s all for now.
That is apart from water apparatus. My wife had an offer at work for a Tami4 water dispenser – and as we do not like the shape of the filtered water taps we have bought one of these to be hidden in a kitchen cupboard. We have also finally had our Bosch Dishwasher installed – and it seems to be cleaning the dishes really well. We also now have a microwave.

Adam.

Just another brick in the wall

Tags

appliances, Buy home, Design, Home, House, Iriya, Israel, Planning Permission, property, walls

Hi all,

Very little has changed – but the movement has become momentous.
What do I mean by this? We have close to finalised the wall plan, plumbing point plan, tile plans for floors (not walls) and furniture plans.
So, why did we suddenly close so much so quickly? Our designer received a call from Yaniv (the contractor) saying that he has 2 weeks free from Tuesday as work has been delayed on a different site due to lack of planning permission. The question was – do we wish to use this down-time that he has. We said yes as we had already basically agreed on the wall plan – but we just had to finalise it.
So, the plans are now going through the final checks – and Yaniv has them to be able to give us an accurate quotation. We will probably be starting on either Tuesday or Wednesday. A saving of 2 weeks at the end is to our advantage. We are still not planning on doing the major work until August 6th.

What else has changed? Tamar (and Adam separately) went to the Iriya to discuss Ishurim (planning permission). Most of what we wish to do is fine and will not be a problem – we just need to provide diagrams and confirmation that structural integrity will be fine from a buildings engineer. The Iriya will not allow us to dig down to enlarge my mother’s garden area as it will open up too much of the basement. Basements are supposed to be underground! We can therefore not significantly enlarge the window in Mum’s lounge – but will enlarge the French doors instead.
We have also been told that we can add a garage door (as long as it is possible to see through part of it – to prove that the area behind is not being used as a rental apartment) and that we can create (what is called here) an English window to allow ventilation and light in the basement storage room.

Shopping – The dishwasher and microwave arrived and the dishwasher will hopefully be plumbed in tomorrow. As an aside, the installation/insurance company is insisting that a trap is put on the waste pipe from the dishwasher. I will do it – but have to say that it is a total waste of time as there is no way that water will be left in the trap as both the dishwasher and washing machine pumps water into the pipe. The pumped water will create a self siphonage effect pulling the water out of the trap and rendering the trap ineffective at catching the smells coming out of the sewage (the only use of a trap).

Will update once the work starts (or doesn’t) next week.

Adam & Joelle.

Consolidation in design

Tags

appliances, Buy home, Design, fish tank, Home, House, Iriya, Israel, Kitchen, Planning Permission, property, Shopping, windows

As we have previously said – we are in a slow phase where we are getting ready to begin the main work.
This means that we are adding more detail to the design and looking at shopping.

Lets start with the easy shopping. We have decided on a Liebherr fridge freezer (for now). We want separates like in the UK. That would be a 60cm fridge and a 60cm freezer. This doesn’t actually exist here – at least not in makes/manufacturers or sizes that we are willing to accept. Therefore we have basically 2 or 3 choices from Liebherr which has a 121cm fridge freezer which is created by connecting two separate units together. We particularly like this style as in the freezer there are many different drawers (8) which allows for the easy separation of different kinds of products. We also finally bought a replacement dish washer and combi microwave/oven. The dish washer is a 6 litre fully integrated bosch model. If we like it then we will buy another one for the new house. The microwave will probably be used for 6 months and then given to Adam’s mum for her new kitchen.

That’s the shopping. In the design front – we have made decisons on which windows we will be enlarging or moving (slightly). This is not as major as it sounds – there are quite a few windows which are a little small. We will be removing a single stone on the top of these windows and then we can have a larger window. This is relatively cheap and from a building cost perspective will only cost about 500NIS per window – plus the cost of more glass. We have also decided where the electricity box will go in the house (Close to where it is – but on the wall opposite), how we are going to build the barrier between the kitchen area and the sunken lounge (we will almost definitely be building up a unit incorporating a fish tank, book shelving and firewood storage) and the confirmation that we wish a shower in our en-suite rather than a bath.

Planning permission. The plans for our property did not arrive at the iriya engineering department this week and therefore we could not make any progress in this area. The plans have been re-ordered and they will hopefully be here for next early week.

Arnona discount. Adam had to go into the iriya finance department yesterday for a separate issue and so he asked if the discount on our arnona had been confirmed. He was told that the discount is given at the end after a second visit to prove that people are still not living within the property.

Bank. The bank has started taking out the mortgage from our account every month. It had to happen – but it is still a shame that we have both a mortgage and rent to pay.

We will update you guys more next week.

Adam & Joelle.