And time for bed

Tags

bedroom, Home, House, interior, photos, renovation

Since the last blog we actually had a visit from Hermetix who fixed the simpler issues with the front door. On the phone they said that they did not cover the paint issue (it is peeling) on their warranty but when the technician came he stated that it was their fault as they did not prepare the door carefully enough prior to painting, so they are going to build us a new front door panel.

I am moving from our area on to the colloquial mess i.e the 2 boys’ bedrooms. I am hoping that this is not too little material – but I do not want too many photos on one page.

Before we move onto the photos I would to comment on two things. The first is that is that we completely changed the layout on this floor and so the before/after photos are a little difficult to link together. They are very different! The second is that our oldest son’s bedroom is very small (He has access to the balcony as a compensation) and I do not have a wide lens camera – this is why I do not have many decent photos of his bedroom.

Below is our oldest son’s bedroom before the work started.

This is the same area (plus the study) after the demolition.

This is the bed area as it is now. We spent a long time looking for a bed to fit well as the room is small and needed a good quality desk underneath.

This last photo is a professional photo that was taken – the props (and picture on the cupboard) do not match our family home at all – nor the room of a 12 year old boy – but the photos weren’t taken for us and so we had only a little say on the matter.

On to our younger son’s room. The first two photos show the room as it was when we moved in and after the demolition.


This next photo is actually looking out of the room when the walls were being rebuilt. The non-straight walls are to add a modicum of privacy plus fit the wardrobes into the rooms.

The last two photos show our youngest son’s room (today)

Next blog will be the indoor play areas.

To be continued,

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.

Demolition and Shopping

Tags

bathroom, bedroom, beds, caesar stone, decking, demolition, flooring, furniture, granite, Home, House, Israel, Kitchen, parquet, showers, tiles

This has also been a productive week, but I am going to assume that we will be slowing down a little for now.

This week Yaniv started on the demolition. All the other contractors quoted 3-4 weeks of work. Yaniv started on Tuesday (it took 3 days to get insurance) and is planning on finishing tomorrow. If he doesn’t succeed it will be on Thursday. Having seen (and being amazed) at how quickly and relatively cleanly the guys have been working I expect this will be completed tomorrow. We will then have a two month gap until we start to rebuild the property.

So why are we having this gap? There are many reasons. The two personal ones are that we wanted to get started on the work and that once the demolition work has been completed we can finalise the design without any unexpected surprises. There was a surprise but it will not be causing us any issues. One of the basement walls was thicker than expected (and made of proper brick) making the builders decide that this is probably a supporting wall. This was a surprise but not the end of the world as we were planning to rebuild the same wall in the same place. It is the wall for my mum’s bedroom.
The other two reasons for the delay are also simple. It gives us more time to complete the design without worrying about having a very close deadline. It also gives us lots of time to complete the shopping, although we are doing fine on the shopping as you will see a little later on.
The arbitrary start date of August 6 makes sense when you realise that this is the end of Ramadan just making it a lot easier for the builders. I personally wouldn’t like to do heavy building work day in, day out in the height of a desert summer day in Israel. This week we have constantly been in temperatures above 30C (pushing 90F) and I have heard that the temperature will be up 40C this Thursday (over 100F). Could you do physical labour in temperatures that are over 40C/104F without any water for over 12 hours??? We couldn’t and we wouldn’t like to force anyone to do this for us. WE will let the workers do less energetic building work on other sites so that they will be able to work more efficiently on my house when they get to us. We have also now paid Yaniv for this section of work.

Design – We have made a few minor changes. We have decided that we would probably use a shower much more than a bath – and so in our en-suite we are changing the bath to a shower. We are also swapping round the study/guest room with Natanel’s room. This will allow us to give Natanel a desk under his bed as he wanted. It will also allow us to make the doors to the balcony (mirpeset) open inwards which will be easier with the alarm system. We are hoping that this will stop Yaakov from banging on Natanel’s wall to get his attention.

Shopping – During the week, Hermetix stated that they were not able to deliver the interior doors that we required. This was because we wanted the doors to have a relatively deep interior panel. They can however do a shallow panel and moulding to make the panel appear to be deeper, which is acceptable to us.
We have confirmed all our tiles, but still wish to look at a parquet floor that we are debating for the sunken lounge. We have made decisions on all the windows in the house (Anderson) and have come close to a final decision on our sofa (there is a specific design that we are planning to import from the states).
We have also looked in more detail at tables, kitchen cabinets and decking. The table will probably be designed for us by Tamar and then we will get it made for us by either one of Tamar’s contacts or a friend of ours that has done carpentry for us before in the uk. The kitchen cabinets are likely to be white with a middle panel and we were looking at appropriate caesar stone tops and have a possible option. The negative on this top is that there is a very slight sparkle in it which we would prefer wasn’t there. We are also going to look at granite tops and if we find one that we particularly like we will compare the prices and probably choose the cheapest one.

That is about all for now. We need to start looking at curtains, lighting, beds, furnishings and the other systems that we are interested in (Alarm, Air conditioning, underfloor heating, Grey water, secondary circulation (a method of having hot water on tap), etc.

Adam & Joelle