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Contractor, Design, doors, Garden, Home, House, interior designer, Israel, property, renovation
Not that many updates – just a few before the photos.
The kablan came and showed his son around the house and then collected the last 5% or so of his money. It was nice to see that he was proud enough of his work to show it off. We have already booked him to repaint and touch up the walls before our son’s bar mitzva in a year’s time.
The designer came with a photographer and a couple of helpers to take photos. We have not yet seen the photos but the rubbish (sorry – I meant props) that the helpers brought would never work in our house. Therefore they used our house to make a photo story of some made up – and non existent – property. We may be being harsh, as we haven’t seen the photos yet, but this is how we felt when they left. I know that during the photo session Tamar also felt the same way with some of the things the helpers were doing. On top of all this, the helpers broke one of our vases filled with potpourri. They just threw the vase/potpourri in the bin and never told us nor Tamar. We were not happy.
Heating, we called the heating guy in as only a very small part of the floor was getting warm. He blamed it on air in the system – even though there are 4 separate automatic air vents installed into the system. He manually vented the system (why wasn’t this done during the install?) and left. The problem with the system – which was explained to us during this visit (but not as a negative) is that there is no automatic switch to turn the whole system off when the house temperature is correct. Instead it leaves a circuit on each thermostat open and constantly circulating with hot water. If we knew this at the time we would have gone for a different system that works efficiently like all the systems in Europe.
After the system was bled we had to put the temperature up to 30C for a day to remove any sludge still in the pipes. Due to this high heat, the “open circuit” and the high level of insulation in the house we still do not know if the system is working as it should be – as the temperature in the house is still unbearably 3 degrees centigrade above the thermostat temperature. The kablan is currently checking if the system is normal in Israel (as claimed) or if we can have it converted to a proper system.
Aquarium, we had a bench hand built from fake decking over the outside part of the aquarium.
Garden – The gardener finished the fence where the neighbour originally refused to let us install it (It was our fence to install with us paying for it!). We just told the gardener to do it and if the neighbour cut it down as she had threatened we would just take the security video to the police. The neighbour actually saw our gardener working and actually said she was pleased as she did not like our kids going in to her garden to get their ball – which frequently went over as there was no fence…..
The gardener also installed 14 mixed climbers along the fences which will start growing in about 2 months when the temperatures improve. He also planted a bush to hide the pond pump, a bush in our outside eating area plus peach and bay trees. We also want lime – but they are not available at the moment. The lime tree will be installed in about 3-4 months.
We are now going to take a pictorial saunter around the back of our house – starting on the left hand side of the garden. It must be remembered that the garden especially will grow, change and mature as time goes on. We do not expect it to be in a “finished” state for a number of years – maybe even 10 years or so.
Below is the garden as it originally looked when we bought it. As the house had been rented out the garden had become overgrown.
Below is the garden after the gardeners had cleaned it up – This was obviously work done before shmitta.
The garden was used as a storage area for both tiles and paint during the building work and this can be seen in this picture.
Below is the left hand side of the garden as it looks now.
This is the back garden when we received the property.
Although the next photo shows a different view point, it is the same area after the builders removed the old patio.
Below is a photo of the garden as it is now. Please ignore the bikes – we still haven’t 100% decided where/how we are planning on storing them.
The most important feature of the garden is definitely the pond.
This is how the pond looked a week after the plants were installed.
We had a pump issue – and unfortunately it affected the floating plant. You can see below how the pond looks at the moment. Floating plants grow very quickly – so we guess it will look fantastic again by the middle of the summer.
We are now turning around and looking at the back wall of the house as it has changed quite a lot.
From the photo above to the French doors below which open outwards from our bedroom into our own private garden.
Below is the right hand side of the garden before we had done any work on it.
This is how it looked after the gardeners left after the first cleaning.
The timeline moves swiftly on to after the pond and patio were built
This part of the garden currently has the wood that I haven’t chopped up yet. When I do – we will put a lime tree in this spot.
Just around the corner is a little section which joins the back garden with our eating area – which is the next photo blog.
As gardens are often overseen by birds I happen to have a couple of photos showing a birds eye view of the patio at the beginning and now.
That’s it for now. Hope you like our main garden area.
Adam & Joelle.
