Coming together at last

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Alarm, aquarium, bathroom, Buy home, Contractor, costs, Design, designer, Electricity, Garden, Home, House, interior, interior designer, Israel, Kitchen, plumbing, renovation, Shopping, showers, sinks, taps, tiles

Hi all,

It has been a really busy and productive week. We have just 8 days to finish the basement until it is to be lived in – and only an extra 2.5 weeks after that until we move in. We know that the carpentry and probably the curtains will not be completed in time, but it looks like the majority of everything else will be done!

Here is where we currently stand:

Windows – the windows finally arrived at the warehouse on Tuesday and the installation started on Thursday. All the windows have been installed and two of the doors (no locks yet). We have 3 more doors to go but one of them will probably not be done until Tuesday as neither Yaniv nor Tamar (Kablan and designer) were aware that the door needed a shayish (literally marble – but possibly any stone) base. This will be installed tomorrow morning (if it was bought in the end) which will delay the installation slightly.
When I say that the windows/doors have been installed I am not being 100% accurate. The windows/doors have been secured in the correct places – they have done neither the cleaning up nor finishing of the units. This will take another week and we expect the whole installation to be finished by Wednesday next week.
There is one window that I looked at twice – there is a 5 cm gap on one side. When I checked about this – I was told that it was installed slightly smaller on purpose so that there would be space for the inside moldings. We were not aware of this when we signed off the windows. I am not sure that I am happy with this as the outside looks strange at the moment. We will make a final decision if we are happy once it has been completely installed and the gap filled in appropriately.
The last bit on this section is the exterior colour. We went with sandstone – mainly because we were told it is the best neutral colour. It definitely looked that way in the showroom, but when seen against our exterior stone we are not so sure and think that we would have been better off with white. We know that both Tamar and our gardener disagree with us (The gardener thinks they are the best looking windows he has seen in Ma’ale Adumim!) – but we both think this was one of those mistakes of understanding/conceptualisation that will always happen when doing such a large building project.

Doors – Adam went and confirmed the interior doors, something felt slightly different and not as good as the original door but we approved them anyway as we have had enough with this company and cannot give them an excuse to delay the installation any longer! We need those doors. If they keep to their promises (we are not holding our breaths) then the external door will be installed on Wednesday and the interior doors will be installed on Sunday and Monday next week.

Alarm – now that the windows are in the alarm needs to be installed next week. We are assuming that the intercom will have to wait as the front gate is not ready yet.

Garden Pond – this is now completed and looks really good except for one jar on the side. This will improve though as the gardener said this was for a hanging plant which should soften it a lot.

Gardener – The gardener has added some soil to our two planters in the mirpeset (balcony) by the lounge, he has also tidied up the wood for us and bought a splitting axe to be used when the wood is dry. He is installing the fences tomorrow. The stone for the paths in the garden are ready to install, but I am not sure when this is planned.

Fence – talking about the fence, our neighbour has decided that she does not like the idea of bamboo on her fence. She has asked that we use a fancy railing instead. The problem with this is that it will add at least an extra 5000NIS to the price. We have to ask her to pay substantially towards this as this is not something that we want anyway.

Concrete – We (well Tamar) chose a colour (that we approved). This was not really that important to us – but it needed to be done. The concrete is for a basketball court and the floor of the garage.

Counter Tops – The downstairs kitchen was installed and it looks great. The shayish person made a couple of matching trivets which we have stolen for our kitchen! At the same time he measured out our kitchen as well. This morning we had a very long discussion on where the counter tops would be cut (not where want as the length would be longer than the actual stone!) and how the edge would be finished. We still do not fully understand the difference but made a decision anyway! These are being installed in the next day or two as far as I am aware.

Splashback – The downstairs kitchen splashback has been started (and is almost finished).

Moldings – These were installed and look really good. They do a strange thing here where they actually glue and staple the moldings in place. I have been promised that these staples will not be visible at the end – so I am assuming they will be completely removed.

Electricity and lighting – Most of the switches and sockets (including some UK sockets) have been installed now. These actually consist of the switch plus the outside plate to finish it off. A couple of the plates have been installed but most haven’t as of yet. All the spot lighting has now been installed including the waterproof options in the bathrooms.

Network – Now that we have all the cables in the correct place – we have arranged for a quote for the network installation. We are doing this as it is very important for the music system and we also wish to move in with this working. I also have some bits already (24 port hub, wifi modem etc) that I wish to incorporate to save a little bit of money.

Glass – The mirrors, shower/bath enclosures and one railing are being installed tomorrow.

Fish tank – This is actually a lead into the carpentry – but that will come next. The carpenter (Dany), designer, kablan and aquarium guy (Uri) all met at the house to discuss and finalise the aquarium/bar unit. Unfortunately it was not something that could be done in one go. The short version is that the carpenter has to prepare a base from a single piece of wood (birch) and then give the exact measurements to the aquarium guy. The aquarium will then be made to these dimensions. This will take 14 working days – ie 3 weeks. After the aquarium installation, Dany can then measure and make the full unit for us.

Carpentry – I said the last item led on to here. See, there is a method to my madness. We spoke to Dany this afternoon and he was very pleased that the windows are going in to protect his work. He is currently working on my man-cave in the back of the garage.

Bathrooms – When Dany came to talk about the aquarium he also installed the vanity unit in the boys’ bathroom which had been left over from the week before.
The boys’ bathroom also has a toilet now and all of the bathroom shower/bath water fixtures have been installed. The downstairs bathroom still has the units that are being used by the workers – and will be changed this week.

Furniture – Two steps forward and one step back (sounds familiar). We have now ordered the sofas, table and all required material. The sample material is at the shop waiting to be collected as soon as possible. This will then be used to enable us to choose appropriate material for the kitchen counter stools that we have chosen (but not ordered). We did have a sofa bed from Joelle’s mum that was going to be put in the kid’s play room. She has decided that the main sofa she has was too big for her new apartment and so she is going to keep it in the end. We have seen a couple of possible options from a company called Dormir and we will order one in the next week or so.

Curtains – Once the windows are in – the curtain company will meet us at the house to finalise materials and to also measure everything out.

Photos – on the computer we have thousands of photos of the construction work that are just not organised. I am writing here publicly that I am hoping to organise them this week so that I can’t be as lazy as I have been with this task over the last 6 months!

That’s enough for today,

Until next week,

Adam.

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A busy couple of weeks

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air conditioning, bathroom, Buy, Buy home, contract, Contractor, costs, Design, designer, doors, Electricity, fireplace, Garden, Home, House, interior, interior designer, Israel, Kitchen, Planning Permission, plumbing, property, renovation contract, Shopping, showers, tiles, walls

For both of us we are in the “busiest” time of work. For Joelle the kids are all sick now and yes it is urgent to see them 20 minutes after the end of the clinic as he/she has been ill for at least three days when we didn’t bother to bring them….. For me it is the end of the year and everyone is busy making sure that their departments have every bit of information required for their year-end reporting. If there are system issues then I wouldn’t have time to think. Luckily everything has gone smoothly – and yesterday was the quietest day I have had in the whole year. Everyone was too busy to bother me!

Even though we are both busy at work – the house is coming along in leaps and bounds. I hardly know where to start. Let’s start with the thing nearest my heart – food 🙂

The smoker – I just could not get in touch with Lang, the more that I looked the more that I saw they had a name for very poor customer service and also for poor looking (but effective) welds on the less important areas of the smoker. So I decided to look further afield and at the moment I am in touch with a company called “Pits by JJ” and am hoping that I can work something out with them. Talking of smokers – I smoked ribs for the first time yesterday and it was one of the nicest and messiest meals that I have ever started a fast on! I even have left overs for supper tonight!

The garden – moving slowly inward. This is the area that has made the most movement over the last two weeks. All the outside tiling and stone areas have been prepared. This includes whitewashing plus the creation of concrete bases etc The two flower beds for the climbing plants in the social area have been built – and look great. We have decided on the stone that we wish to use for the natural stone we are using for the stairs and the area near to the entrance of the house. We have designed how we are doing the stairs. We have also started to speak about lighting of the garden stairs and also about fences and handrails for safety. This week we also took home 10 tangerines (many more left on tree) and have to pick the pomelos as well to promote extra growth. It can be a shabbat treat.

Outside lighting – I have samples of the two possible lights (they are identical but different sizes) and we need to look at them and confirm if they work for us. They are technically not waterproof – but the only way they will get wet by the electrics is through someone spraying them with water from underneath. The kablan is happy with them from a water perspective as well.

Wood – I have started to chop up the wood in a way that will be more useful to us. It is hard work as it hasn’t really dried out enough yet. I am also starting to move it into a place that is out of the way.

Railings / Fencing – Two different suppliers came to the house yesterday to show off the options that they have as well as measure to quote for the work we need. Outside we need some kind of front fence which will also be used as a separation of two different garden areas. This really is an issue as we do not like any of the options that we have been shown in either steel or aluminium. In Israel, wood is really not an ideal but we may need to use it as that is all we really like. If we do go for wood I am not looking forward to the maintenance. We also have railings on the stairs and by any drops. We will need a grill to cover an “English Window” as well as one patio window as well.

Garage – We do not wish to have a garage door and we do not have planning permission for it, so we have ordered an automatic parking barrier which will stop others using our garage. It is a small thing that will drop on the to the floor whenever we wish to park – and will stay up when the garage is empty.

Outside doors – the space for the outside French door has been finished. We started looking at doors (more about this later) and we are really struggling with the main front door. We just do not like the outside doors that are available. All the aluminium ones are as ugly as hell – and the wooden ones just will not last due to the heat.

Inside doors – We had a meeting with Hermetix at the beginning of the week where we confirmed everything that we ordered. We confirmed the door designs, chose the colours and locking mechanisms. We also selected a door handle but do not like the handles they have on option – we are going to look for a different option from the shops. All the Hermetix doors will be measured next week.

Inside railings – the guys that are doing the quote for the outside fences/railings will also be giving us a quote for the stair railings. These are going to be the simplest possible. We do not want anything that looks too fancy.

Wardrobes – We ordered the boys and our wardrobes last week. When I got home I realised that I am supposed to pay an additional payment for delivery/installation of over 10% of the build cost. Considering we are buying fitted cupboards I was not happy with this and I complained. I am awaiting a response through Tamar about this.

Interior design – talking of Tamar, she is keeping everything moving, arranging meetings and specialists to come, nagging us to make decisions and look at different options. We still do not know where she finds enough hours in the day to do everything.

Natanel’s bed – we went to one store in Talpiot but their beds were too low and looked so babyish. We wish to put a desk underneath and so it will need to have a reasonable height.

Carpentry – quotes have gone out to a couple of carpenters. We have a partial quote back from one, but we are still waiting on this – one of the most important (read expensive) areas of the project.

Kitchen – we now have a quote for a kitchen in the basement. We are waiting on another two so we have not seen it yet. We want this (and the other carpentry) to be in before the windows.

Bathroom glass – our glass person came yesterday and we realised that the glass door in our en-suite will actually hit the shower head if it is opened inwards. As we have rain showers we are not worried about water spraying too high and so we have dropped the height of the glass slightly. We had a big discussion about the shower in the kids bathroom and I said that we are staying with a double door for the boys. We do not think there is enough space if we have a single door as it is being used on a bath and not a shower.

Bathroom – There is an access panel for the air conditioning unit that was included in our bathroom that I never even knew was needed. It looks really cool and has been nicely done.

Kablan – The kablan has continued with all the tasks. Finishing off the window spaces, testing grout with our tiles (we still have to make one choice), preparing the walls for painting, electricity, completion of interior tiling and the tiling of the front upper mirpeset (balcony) amongst other things that I may not have even noticed.

Fireplace – The base that we will be using for building our fire on has been completed – I need to go and collect that early next week.

Shopping – Some extra meaty crockery has just come in that I need to collect which will allow us to take our every day numbers up to 10 place sittings. We have ordered and received some bedding, rugs, cushion, pillowcases and a clock from the Man City football team website shop to decorate Natanel’s room. The actual items were reasonably priced, but the delivery and import duties/tax doubled the price.

That’s all for now,

Adam.

A room with a view – Almost

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Hi all,
Well, it has been 2 long weeks with the first week being very quiet. The second one picked up drastically. So, eyes down and look in for the latest chance to see if we have managed a full house!

Planning Permission – As I wrote in my last post, we had received planning permission in theory – but had to wait for and pay an “Agra” (Agra is a payment to a government office – thank you Morfix). So, I waited (very patiently) for a whole 4 days and then went to the planning office to ask why I hadn’t received this very important documentation. They said that it had been sent! They kindly (after a firm, but polite, push) gave me the “Payment Number”. I took this number to the local council payments office and paid them just over 3000NIS (Is this daylight robbery or what?) and took the receipt back to the planning office. The planning office then asked where the second sheet was from the payments office. I said that I hadn’t been given one and they (thankfully) said that they would sort it out. I was told that the planning permission would take about 3-4 days and that they would call me. 4 days later – the Agra request for payment finally turned up in the post – to be stored in the paperwork dustbin known as a filing cabinet. I phoned the planning department and asked why I hadn’t heard, just to be told that it wasn’t ready and that I should just be patient. I have been patient for over 8 months now (mainly due to the inadequacies of the different structural engineers) – so a few more days shouldn’t be too difficult. The following day, I received a call saying that the planning permission had arrived. I thought “Thank G-d” and called the kablan to see if he was around to collect it (he wasn’t allowed to do the work unless this document was in his hands). He wasn’t – but he especially came back to Ma’ale Adumim to collect it as agreed with the planning department. The planning department was closed! After some phone calls, I was given the name of a specific person in a different department that could give the document to our Kablan. All was finally saved, and we could now get on with our work and ORDER the windows.

Windows – As the windows follow on, I will continue with these. We had another two or three meetings at the house to finalise the windows. We didn’t bother to go to any of these and they were handled exclusively by the designer and the kablan. After an awful lot of work by everybody we received a final order from Andersen Windows and we looked though it. Tamar queried some of it and we didn’t like the look of one specific window. After a two-hour email discussion with different options going back and forth we decided to return to the original option because it was a lot cheaper. Once everything was finished (again) we arranged for the payment and we hope that we will catch the shipment which we were originally told will arrive by the end of January. We have since been told that the factory will be closed over Xmas and so it will now be a week later! I will update you on this in about 2 months!
As an aside two of the window spaces still need to be enlarged.

Tiling – The tiler has completed a bit more, but as we have to wait for the underfloor heating to be finished before he can continue he has gone on to another project and will return in a week or two.

Kablan – The kablan has been working hard on the organisation of different specialists, tiling, windows, removing security bars and the front door etc. He has added marble window ledges at the request of the window company and he is going to be adding a supporting beam to our bedroom door at the request of the structural engineer. We also noticed a couple of very minor tile/Caesar Stone issues (one that we later found out was caused by a block dropped by a worker from a height onto the Caesar stone strip) which are going to be fixed soon.

Underfloor Heating / Hot water – The underfloor heating was supposed to be installed last week – but was put off by the supplier. He started yesterday and has already done quite a lot of work on this. We are still waiting to find out if the hot water collectors are going to be copper as we wish or the more standard steel. For some reason he has placed heating under our cupboards and I am worried that this will warp the carpentry – I have sent off a query and am waiting for a response.

Fireplace – Talking of heating, the third of our heating methods is a fireplace in the lounge (The main is the air conditioning, the second just for select areas is the underfloor heating). Tuesday, we finally found someone who can build the fireplace as we wished and he started the following day (We were lucky with the heavy rain as he pushed us in and delayed some outside work instead). They worked on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday! It was only supposed to be two days work – but the chimney stack was off centre and this slowed things down. There was also a leak into the chimney caused by the deficient pointing around the top of the chimney stack.

Carpentry – We have spent a lot of time over the last week or two going over this. We have finalised the plans (apart from one set of cupboard doors) and have confirmed materials and colours. We have also (as it is connected) decided on paint colour options for the walls. We have requested large samples of about 10 paint colours to be used in different places and when we receive these we will make our final paint decisions (We have decided on using magnetic paint on the wall between the desk and the bookcases (above the desk) in the study as a place we can store notes with magnets.

Sheets – Before we actually looked at the paint colours, we started looking at bedding. Our oldest has decided that he wants his room to be a “shrine” to Man City FC – so he is going to have everything in sky blue with appropriate bedding, cushion covers, wall clocks and rugs as appropriate. It is actually not too expensive to buy this stuff direct from the club (as long as you ignore the shipping cost of 40GBP). Our kitchen cabinets are in a design called Tottenham (a far superior football club) and so we will be having lots of Spurs vs City games in the house.
We looked on the American “Bed, Bath and Beyond” online store for the rest of the bedding – and were disgusted to see that they only sold sizes that were a lot bigger than a standard single duvet covers. We found what we like – but have not yet found where they are sold in a size that we need!

Lights – We have finally paid for our main light order – we just have to find (and confirm) the less standard lights. The electrician has done some work towards the LED lights in the lounge.

Electricity – This naturally follows on from the lights. The electricity meter has now been moved outside the house and onto a wall in the garden. This is quite ugly and I want to see if we can change the position and make it smaller.

The Rain – As most of you may be aware – we had a lot of rain at the end of last week. This is a blessing both for Israel and us. It is great for us because it showed up issues that we wouldn’t have know about until too late. There are a few leaks coming into the house which needs to be repaired and the stone cladding of a concrete wall (between different garden levels) collapsed as well. We are happy that this occurred now and not just after we have done the decorating!

Exterior concrete and stonework – We are talking about the floors here. We have confirmed that we are using plain concrete (in different colours) for the play area and within the garage. We are doing all the steps in a specific stone – and this means that the area off this stone will be the same colour. We have a few other areas where we need to decide whether we are using the stone or a decorative (ie fake stone) concrete. We are moving along on this.

Tree stump – In the “social” area of the garden which we are planning to use as a cooking corner there was a tree stump that was in the way. The gardener tried to remove it with a crane – but he broke countless straps and had to give up. The concrete guys knew someone who would remove this stump. The guy came on Friday morning and literally ground away the stump (vertically) a little at a time until he finally removed it. This was a lot of work – and it was obviously noisy as our neighbours complained about it to us the following day. These neighbours (the son that doesn’t live there – not the mother) complains constantly. So, we told him that the tree was removed at our cost at the request of his mother – and the incidental noise will not re-occur. It obviously will not re-occur as the stump is not there anymore – so the comment was non-nonsensical but included in our relatively insincere apology. If he wasn’t such a complainer over nothing as well as saying how amazing he is for “helping us” in ways that are not actually helpful then we would care more , but …..

Smoker – The guy that managed the fireplace has a brother-in-law that builds both smokers and barbecues to design. We have to make measurements and finalise our design and send it off to him for a quote. We will see what he comes back with.

That’s quite enough excitement for a fortnight. We will update you again soon,

Adam & Joelle.

Waiting

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Hi,

We have been continuing to move at a reasonable pace – but with the same single issue holding us back.

Planning permission: Our plans went to the “va’ada”/planning meeting on Thursday. We have been told that we will receive the answer by mail either yesterday or today. It wasn’t in yesterday’s post, we will check when we get home tonight. If it is not there then the structural engineer has told us to contact him and he will see what he can do.

Lighting: We spent a couple of hours in a lighting warehouse selecting the main lights that we will be using. Tamar actually had two meetings with them. The first was in the morning where she dismissed all the options we had already said we didn’t like. She did forget some lights that we brought over from the UK – and she has removed these lights from the quote. We still need to go shopping for the more fancy lights (dining area).

Integrated sound system: We met up with the sound guy at the house on Friday. We discussed the exact placement of everything as well as what we wished to connect to the system. He was slightly perplexed to hear that we have neither yes / hot nor a satellite box (cable TV etc) which is normally used as a gathering point for the sound system. He will be adding a streamer box to compensate for this. Afterwards, he came back to our current house to look at our current “boxes” and found that he has no way of connecting them to the system – so we will need to add a new DVD (or Blu-ray) player which was not planned. We should at least be able to use this to play any CD’s that we haven’t converted to mp3 yet. We also had to pay a deposit so that he could cover his initial purchases.

Alarm: We were looking through the plans and realised that the alarm did not have any panic buttons. We know that a panic option is available through the alarm keypads but we have to decide whether or not to add physical buttons or not. We definitely need one by our bedroom (which leads on to a hidden garden) but not sure about the front door.

Air conditioning: All the copper pipes are now in place (this was actually completed last week) and four of the internal units have been put on the walls. They have not yet been connected to the piping.

Walls / Finishing: Plans for closing off the pipes in the attic/loft area have been given to the Kablan. We are just creating a “new” wall using plaster board/ sheetrock and they will then be finished properly. We are not putting in any niches as in this room it really isn’t necessary.

Electricity / Plumbing: The electricity conduits have now all been put into place and the plumbing (cold/hot water pipes – not the hot water tanks nor the underfloor heating) with the exception of 1 garden point that is still open.

Tiling: The loft area has now been tiled. We put the American walnut wood tiles in the play area and cheap/simple tiles in the storage area. The wood tiles are so good that friends of ours that looked at the house over Shabbat thought that we had put down real wood. Tamar has given an alternative tiling plan to the Kablan as the tile manufacture suggests not to use the fish-bone design we originally wanted due to “lippage”. We are awaiting a full explanation of lippage and then we will decide whether or not to listen to the tile manufacturers.

Concrete: we still haven’t managed to look at the concrete example that we were sent as we had to look at the Carpentry plans on Friday (more about this later).

Kablan: We have now finished a “stage” of the work – electrical conduits and basic plumbing so according to the contract we paid the Kablan 30% of the contract price. Actually, we were supposed to pay 30% – but only paid 20% as we were expecting him to be further through by now (he is held up by the planning permissions of course) and the payment went through late as the bank’s computer systems were down on the day that the payment was planned. The payment went through today to arrive tomorrow! We will pay the other 10% in about 2 weeks once the window spaces have been enlarged and the windows have been ordered.

Design: Tamar has been working hard on the designs This can be split into three main areas:
Carpentry : We had a 3 hour meeting with Tamar on Wednesday and looked over the designs that were created. We commented on the work and took it back home to look over in more detail. We have made some changes and sent this back to Tamar just over a day ago. This included clarification requests, measurements of items we wish to store, small changes to doors etc, additional pieces and the removal of a large piece as it was not what we wanted due to a small misunderstanding about what we meant when we said we wanted a bookcase on the stairs. Tamar also sent us additional queries that we will discuss tonight. We will be spending at least an hour tonight looking through door/cupboard handles. The delights of carpentry! Once all this is completed Tamar will update the plans, await our approval and then send everything off to companies to have it priced out.
Kitchen: This is actually part of the carpentry design but so large that it requires a section of its own here. During our meeting Wednesday we sat in a kitchen carpentry store and used the opportunity to look at all the different options available to us (inside the units) from this company. It helped us decide which options to incorporate into the design.
Glass: Tamar sent us the design work for the shower glass dividers and 4 of the mirrors. She got us quotes and we went for a cheaper option with someone who does very good work – but not the best. He was at least a third cheaper and this wasn’t a cheap purchase. There are still 2 glass doors and maybe some mirrors we require. These extras are not so urgent as they will not stop work continuing.
Tiling: Due to a manufacturer “requirement” Tamar had to create a new tiling plan for the main floor of the house as mentioned above under tiling. It is up to us to decide whether we listen to the manufacturer or not.

We are leaving this post on a planning cliff hanger. We couldn’t even make it more exciting if it was planned. OK, we could but today/tomorrow we will find out what is happening with the planning permission and how it affects the rest of the work.

Adam & Joelle

Gathering Momentum Again

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Hi,

After a few slow weeks we are starting to gather momentum again – we are still being held up by planning permission so I will start there:

Planning Permission: I went in to the Iriyah (local council) to chat with those involved with the early parts of the planning permission process and they told me that my application goes to the “Va’ada” (meeting) during this week before the end of the month. After that I have to pay some money and do some tasks and that I should talk to my structural engineer who will guide me through the process. So, basically I now know that we are starting to make progress (after 6 weeks of waiting with our paperwork doing nothing due to chagim/festivals) but I have no idea how much longer after this stage we will need to wait to get the final planning permission so that we can order our windows. The windows will take about 2 months to be delivered.

Tiles:  As far as I am aware the last of the tiles have now arrived. There is a possibility that we are waiting for just 1 box of a different tile (we were last week) but it may have come in with this final batch of tiles.The kablan/builder is planning on starting the tiling of the attic today – and then working his way down.

Plumbing: We now have both baths, and the shower installed in the house. The basement bathroom is completely tiled as well.

Plumbing Extras: I found out last week that the plumbing deliveries came without the bath taps. These taps need to be available at installation time as they cannot be installed at a later point. Therefore the kablan bought these taps and we will have to pay him for them – and take them off the plumbing order. The kablan has also been ordering the Caesar stone for finishing off the tiling edges and bathroom shelving as he works. This is quicker than him sending measurements to Tamar – and then having her obtain and then deliver it. We owe the kablan about 2000NIS for these bits and pieces so far.

Alarm: The alarm guy came last week. I am still not quite sure why he came – but I was there at the time and I made some very important changes. Basically the window alarms work by a unit which puts a beam across the windows. If the beam is broken then the alarm goes off. The alarm company had arranged that all these units will be “outside” the windows sticking out of the building at points where kids (and their footballs) will be constantly knocking and breaking them. This was extremely badly designed and required the common sense of a fly to realise that this just wouldn’t work with two young (6 and 10 year old) boys in the house. I arranged for the position of these alarm units to be moved within the window recesses. So, even though I did not see a reason for the alarm guy to come – it was lucky that he did come otherwise I would have been furious with his solution. As an aside, I found out that the alarm person that we are using actually works for a company (and not for himself as we thought) and he was off sick for a while. The company sent someone else – who made changes without telling us or discussing it with me. Tamar (the interior designer) complained and got the changes revoked and had the original alarm contractor put back onto our project.

Electricity: The electrician is continuing with putting in the conduit for the cables, alarm system, air conditioning and sound system. He obviously had to redo parts of the alarm which neither he nor the kablan were happy about – but that is hard luck as if they had thought for just a moment they would have spoken to me about the bad positioning of the sensors in the first place.

Air Conditioning: All of the Toshiba units (the main house) have arrived and the air conditioning team is installing all the copper piping for shifting the coolant throughout the system. The main external unit is enormous! It is over 6 – 7 ft tall and about 4ft wide and deep as well. It is now sitting on our roof and – trust me – it ain’t going nowhere.

Lintel above garage: I spoke to the kablan about this – and he knows that he has to fix it.

Parking Space Barrier: I found a remote-controlled solar parking space barrier that exactly fitted our requirements to stop others using our garage. I passed this info onto our kablan who showed it to a supplier of his. This supplier used to sell this device but found that there were issues with having enough electricity in the motor all the time. He therefore suggested an identical device that was powered from the mains. This is a cheaper solution as well (unless we get extra installation costs – but as we have a fixed electrical installation fee we will probably not pay anything extra here).

Garden: The final cleaning of the garden has been done and Joelle tried to go and see a fancy concrete installation example. The problem was that the address we were given has the concrete in their garden – but it is behind a security fence and no one was home at the time – therefore she couldn’t see it clearly. I will try and go tomorrow after a shopping trip for lights with Tamar.

Design: We had a telephone meeting last week with Tamar just to confirm that we all understand where we are at, and to discuss our next steps forward. We arranged 2 more meetings (lighting and carpentry) for the next week or two.

Garden composter: This came at the beginning of last week and I put it together on the day that I got it. With experience of this specific product – I do not like the door. It sometimes falls off when turning (or every time when a kid leaves the door facing downwards after playing with the handle).
I had my youngest son with me on the day that I built it – and the idiot (meant in the politest sense possible) as children often are – decided to play. He climbed over a railing on top of the garage and was standing on a platform less that a foot wide with no barrier between him and a 2.5 metre (9ft) fall onto a concrete pavement. He was throwing stones at a lamp-post because he liked the sound it made when they hit each other. As you can imagine I wasn’t very happy and a put a stop to it extremely quickly (and VERY carefully) so that he did not fall into a trip to the ER or worse…..

Doors: we have also discussed whether we would rather have a normal interior door – or a security door between the basement and the rest of the house.

Contract: Our contract states that we have a 10% leeway of extra work that will be done within the paid work. A lot of the garden work is being done within this leeway. The kablan sent us a status of the extra work that has been done (or has been approved) and we have about 3-5000NIS left until we run out of “free” work. There are some things on this list which we have queried – and Tamar is looking into them.

Moving on: The next major tasks we have are starting on the garden when the gardener is back from his holiday, windows once we have the planning permission, fireplace/smoker and concrete areas in the garden.

Guests: We also have our first guests invited to stay at the house! We have friends coming over from the UK to stay for a couple of weeks over Pesach! This is the first time we can easily put people up after making Aliya 5 years ago. Now all we have to do is finish on time!

That’s all for now, will update you next week.

Adam & Joelle.

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.