3 weeks later

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Alarm, aquarium, bathroom, Contractor, Design, designer, Dishwashers, doors, Electricity, Garden, Home, House, interior designer, Iriya, Israel, Kitchen, plumbing, property, renovation, Sound System, windows

Very little has happened, but we have been learning lots about the house.
Due to Pesach things slowed down – but we are now picking up the pace again

We will start with the most important room in the house – namely the kitchen
Kitchen – all doors have been fitted, including dishwasher fronts. We have shelves now on which we have put all the cookery books that we use most often. We are adjusting the shelf where the microwave will go as it is not deep enough. The food disposal unit is still not working – we have to get it properly installed rather than using a plumber. we now have 4 counter stools for the breakfast bar (bar stools are taller than counter stools)

Doors (Hermetix) – all main doors are installed – most of the lock covers have rust on them so will need replacing. A couple of rubbers on the bottom of the doors need sorting out…and we still don’t have the mastered locks we want – so Hermetix have to come back. We do have the cell number of the guy who did the installation of the doors, and he seems to be helpful.

Carpentry – Delkoub finished the cupboards in Natanel’s room after the a/c unit was moved slightly and the front cover taken off.
– Natanel’s bed now has ladders on both sides, and has been put together.
– Danny has been hard at work. The following have been installed since the last blog was posted:

Dining room unit – not finished yet, needs the glass backs
– Guest room cupboards, desk and book shelves
– Upstairs hallways linen/storage closet
– Playroom cabinet
– Cover over a/c over piano – needs painting
– Garage unit
Danny has measured and is planning the unit round the aquarium which will include bar and storage for firewood.

Bathroom – all accessories except for 1 towel rail have been put up. We have to replace the one towel rail which came damaged. As an aside, we did not like the towel rail which came in the range so we used a straight toilet roll holder which works fine.

Windows – These have been finished and the windows and Andersen doors have been painted. We now have to put up all the mezuzot.

Curtains – have been ordered after going to the shop to finalise which materials we are using for the various curtains and blinds. There will be a delay for the duettes as the old catalogue materials are not available and the new catalogue had not yet arrived

Aquarium – has been installed and is now filled with water. we have to decide if we are putting in fish before or after Danny finishes the unit around it. We will probably wait as it should only take a few weeks. We think that the pump may be slightly too strong as the water is coming in faster than it is going out. We will talk to Uri. After he finished last week the plumber came to put the tap in that was needed outside.

Outdoor pond in garden – this had already become a breeding ground for mosquitoes…so we have turned on the pump to keep the water moving, added some fish and a couple of small frogs. Most of the mosquito larvae have already been eaten. The other issue is that a lot of sand ended up in the pond due to the recent rain and so we are changing the pump to a filter which should help to clean the water.

Alarm – this has basically been installed and finished. We need to make a few small adjustments, including a fixed IP address for the house so we can see the feed for the camera.

Music system and network – basically finished but will need tidying up once necessary sockets are in place. These could only been done after the cupboard was finished so this is a job for the electrician…

Electrician – we need to write a list of all the outstanding jobs for the electrician and pass this on to the Kablan – will hope to get this done tomorrow.

Telephone – when bezeq came to connect our tenant’s line we were told to change the cable as it was very old – this was duly done but in the process all the lines were messed up. We ended up with our tenant’s internet line and no telephone, while they had nothing. This has since been fixed by bezeq.

That’s it for now – update coming soon

Adam and Joelle

Home sweet home…

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air conditioning, bathroom, Contractor, designer, Dishwashers, doors, Electricity, Home, House, interior designer, Kitchen, Ovens, plumbing, renovation, sinks, taps, windows

So – this blog is being written while sitting on our new duvet covers on our new bed after having a shower in our new bathroom in the new house which we moved into 2 days ago…

We are pretty tired after a very busy few days but thought we should write a quick update…it is in no particular order

Kitchen – finished except for moldings and dishwasher fronts. Kitchen tap has been moved, we will install a soap dispenser.

Doors  – getting there but still not completed – final interior door is hopefully being installed tomorrow. Hermetix also need to finish the door frames and give us properly mastered locks.

Bedroom cupboards – installed – although Natanel’s needs finishing and ours needs some adjustments and changes – hopefully tomorrow. Ya’akov is really enjoying his cupboard doors that he can draw on with whiteboard markers (the doors are white glass basically making a very large whiteboard)

Gas – our canisters arrived – oven installed and working well. Hob is great.

Old electricity box – removed – bin put in correct place.

Dishwashers, fridge and freezer, washing machine and dryer  – installed.

Air con – finished but we need a lesson on how to use it.

Bathrooms basically finished – accessories and some light fittings need installing. Cables for heaters which we didn’t want have been removed.

Entry coat closet and cupboard in upstairs hall – installed. Other carpentry work is continuing.

Sofabed – delivered.

Outside railings – have been measured.

Hammock – not ready for another 3 weeks – not what we planned but we will deal with it

Natanel’s bed – ladder was put on wrong side – waiting for replacement. He is currently sleeping on a mattress in the spare room.

Our bed and headboard – installed, looks lovely but not 100% correct – needs to be fixed.

Curtains and blinds – materials chosen and windows spaces measured

Hot water – connected but getting some yellow water once in every tap. If this continues we will look into it. The contractor is already aware that this may be a problem – and he agrees. The system works really well. The copper makes the water very hot extremely quickly even on these cool spring days. We also get instant hot water rather than having a 10 second wait as is normal in Israel.

Internet and telephone – connected but we were advised to change the telephone cable as it was old and now our phone isn’t accepting calls and the renters have no internet.

Outside – basically finished

so we have:

Windows, doors, kitchen, bathrooms, electricity, lights, internet (house telephone not working at the moment) water, gas, beds, cupboards…what more do we need?

So far, the most commented on part of the house has been the windows. This could be as they are visible from outside but we are having 10+ people a week (including strangers) saying how nice they are. We have even been asked for Andersen’s contact details.

Kablan will be sorting out all the finishing touches but main workers finished today.
Finally we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel…

Bye for now – it is late and the clocks are moving forward here tonight.

Adam and Joelle

And they messed up again

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air conditioning, Alarm, appliances, aquarium, bathroom, Buy, contract, Contractor, designer, Dishwashers, doors, Electricity, Garden, Home, House, interior, interior designer, Israel, Kitchen, Ovens, plumbing, property, renovation, Shopping, showers, sinks, taps, tiles

Who else could I be speaking about – except for Hermetix. They promised installation and failed and failed again. I am starting with the area where this affected me the most – the basement.

Tenants – The tenants were supposed to be moving in today. They were told a couple of months ago that it would be very tight. A week ago we told them it would be an extra couple of days. I do not currently know how long until they move in as I am waiting for two main areas as will be explained below. The tenants’ main issue was that they had to leave their current property and therefore they needed to store everything. They are using the apartment for that without issues and they are currently staying with family. It says something about how difficult it is to get a good apartment that they are willing to “live” with the delayed real start date.

Basement Front door – We had the kablan (contractor) arrange for new facias and lock to be installed onto the existing front door. This has been done (white on the inside and I guess grey on the outside – the guess is because I saw it at night without any lights). It did look good though.

Basement Tiling – The kitchen splashback was completed and all grouting has now been done.

Basement Electricity – All lights have been installed, all sockets and switches have been completed. The only electrics that need doing is “covering” of the heater cables in the bathroom as I do not want these and the labeling of each circuit fuse switch in the electricity box for clarity. The electrician specifically came to the house on Friday (weekend here) to complete this part of the installation.

Basement Windows – The basement windows and patio door have now been completed.

Air conditioning – The 4 air conditioning units and base unit have been installed.

Cleaning – The kablan did basic cleaning of the basement. It wasn’t amazing but it was acceptable.

Protective bars – We are now onto the areas left to do. The protective bars around the basement windows/patio door needs to be returned/replaced. This hasn’t been done yet. It is cheaper to add the bars than to install an alarm.

Vanity Unit – Everybody has been nagging for the vanity unit to be installed in the bathroom for the last 2 weeks. We have been told today that it will be installed on Wednesday.

Plumbing – The hot water (pumps/hot water tank and solar heat collectors) are being installed tomorrow. The final plumbing connections in the kitchen haven’t been completed either. I may offer to do them myself tomorrow to speed things up!

Gas Points (inside and out) – These are being installed on Thursday by Amisragas. They are supposed to be giving ballonim (gas canisters) as well – just not sure if that is at the same time or on the following Sunday (normal delivery day).

Interior doors – These were supposed to be installed on Sunday but Hermetix did it again….they failed to deliver what they had promised. The kablan was waiting for the doors so that he could do the last finishing touches, but the Hermetix installer was sick yesterday and today so the doors haven’t gone in. I am not sure that the installer is sick – I have a feeling that the doors just aren’t ready. I have been told that the company feels very bad and that this is the first time that anyone has heard them apologise for anything (although they didn’t bother calling us to apologise – nor offer any compensation however small). We still do not know when we are getting the doors as the company wishes to use the “best” installer that they have. It doesn’t make us feel any better. We feel really guilty that the tenants are being messed around so much.

That’s enough for the basement, on to the rest of the house, starting outside and moving in and up.

Garden – The water feature, stepping stones and watering system have been installed. Most of the fence netting has been installed except for where the neighbour was complaining. We are going to wait until we have cameras looking at that part of the garden in case what we do doesn’t gain her approval.

Front door – Hermetix did actually manage to get one thing installed on time – the front door. It is due to the front door and windows being installed that so much has been done in the last week.

Windows – All windows and doors have been installed now. Andersen are hoping to complete the “finishing” tomorrow with the single exception of the painting of the wooden doors. They have a specific worker who specialises in this part of the project. Andersen are planning on walking through the whole project with me tomorrow afternoon. The painting will be organised in the next couple of days.

Concrete – The concrete was installed both in the garage and for the play area. The garage looks great, but the play area has white streaks on it – I am not sure if this is related to dirt or some other issue.

Electrics – The electrician continued with finishing off our electrics. He has not yet done the lights.

Alarm – The alarm is being partially installed tomorrow.

Smoke Alarms – after a confused discussion with the electrician we found out that we had approved for our smoke alarms to be wired into the alarm system (rather than separate battery operated units). This will also be done as part of the alarm installation.

Network – We have a quote for the installation of the hard and wifi network. We also need to arrange for an internet provider to give us connection at the house.

Gas Points – This is the same as the basement. Our points will be installed on Thursday, the only difference is that we do not yet have an oven as they need a point to install it. Therefore we will not be given our ballonim and will have to call the gas company back the following week (more money!)

Hot water – as in the basement, our hot water is being installed tomorrow. Our underfloor heating air pump will be installed at the same time.

Counter Tops – Our kitchen counter tops and sinks were installed.

Under sink waste disposal – We ordered an “insinkerator” from a US exporter that specialises in 240V appliances. It arrived last week and was collected yesterday after VAT was charged on the item plus shipping costs.

Fish tank – moving sideways (or forwards depending on perspective) we get to the fish tank. The wooden base has been installed and the glass tank is being made at the moment. When installed the carpenter can then create the unit around it.

Glass – The glass railing, mirrors and shower/bath doors were installed. The railing still needs a wooden top that the carpenter is not yet aware of!

Cleaning – this is booked for the 17th and 18th March. After this there will be very little “dirty” work to do. Mainly carpentry and “finishing” off.

Wardrobes – The wardrobes were booked for the 18th which is not possible due to the cleaning. The company has promised to do their best to get the wardrobes in on the 19th. It has not yet been confirmed though.

Study Paint – the kablan is including Magnetic paint for the area behind the desk in the study so that we can use it to hold company magnets and “post-it” notes.

Carpentry – we found out that the carpenter was working on the units for our garage. These are probably the lowest on our “order of importance”. We created a new list for him that included cupboards and public areas before the bits that are just for our personal storage!

Sofa bed – this has been ordered. Normally it takes 30 days plus – but as we need it for use on the 28th the company is trying to push it through quickly. I think they are trying to impress our designer as she hasn’t used them for about 6 months!

Deliveries – I wanted to arrange all deliveries for Tuesday 24th – but that would be too tight for us moving in. Instead I decided to do everything on the 19th but being in Israel this didn’t work. We now have our fridge, freezer and oven being delivered on the Wednesday (have arranged that kitchen cleaning is done first). Natanel’s bed is being installed on the 19th as is ideal (closets as well hopefully). The other beds are coming in on the twentieth. We also ordered today a new dishwasher and TV for the Wii – we do not yet know what day this will be delivered. The fun was arranging the delivery of the fridge freezer. We are getting a more European style and it comes in two units (separate fridge and freezer). The delivery company have it documented in their warehouse as two fridges rather than a fridge and freezer. The shop has promised me that the delivery company has it wrong and if there is an issue to call him. For those who need to buy large electrical items in Israel for the first time – be aware that once the item turns up you cannot even unpack it. You need to call a installation service – paid for by the manufacturer/shop – who install it for you. This confirms your warranty. If you unpack a fridge and plug it in yourself you have no warranty at all – even if it doesn’t work out of the box.

Moving – We have arranged for a removal company to move us on either the 24th or 26th March. We want the 26th but it is easier for them on either the 24th or 25th. They are only moving the large items as we will be moving the rest ourselves as we have overlapped the move and our rental by a whole month. We will not be moving our everyday kitchen until after pesach (We are moving into a brand new/clean pesachdik kitchen – and house – a really lucky side benefit of the timing).

Pesach presents – Israeli companies often give “bonus” presents for Rosh Hashana and Pesach. I was offered a set of choices and I decided to be nice to the boys (actually – it may be nicer to Joelle!) and I selected the fancy Karaoke machine which connects to the TV and will provide minutes of embarrassing fun.

That’s all for the week (except that which I forgot or am not aware of due to the protection of both designer and Kablan),

Adam & Joelle.

A step in the right direction

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aquarium, bathroom, Contractor, Design, designer, Dishwashers, doors, Electricity, fireplace, Garden, Home, House, interior, Israel, Kitchen, renovation, Shopping, tiles, walls

Hi all,

I was ready to create a new blog on Sunday night – but decided to postpone as lots was planned in the house yesterday. I will start with the stairs – so you can see our steps in the right direction:

Tiling/Stairs – The second flight of outside stairs plus the steps between the upper and lower outside areas by our lounge have been completed. The bulk of outside tiling has now been completed. The only tile work left are some of the edges (inside and out), fixing of damaged exterior house stone and the grouting. For some reason, they have also tiled the area under where the fish tank will be going.

Sanding – The walls have been sanded down and they are now working on the niches and the areas for the lights. There have been points when it is has been impossible to walk into the property with the amount of dust in the air. My car is constantly dirty with white footprints where the dust had stuck to my shoes.

Painting – Our kitchen area had its first coat of paint. The colour (a light grey almost greige) is fantastic. The inside of the kitchen windows have been painted white. They have also started to paint the ceiling in white.

Kitchen – The carpenter came and did measurements, made comments and discussed changes with us. He finalised the already finalised plans and has started working on the kitchen. Now that the final plans have been put in – the team measured out all the plugs and gas points and decided to move a few slightly to better fit the kitchen. As we changed the toe kick from 12cm to 10cm we cannot put a cleaning robot within the toe kick anymore and therefore we have cables for an electrical plug that is not required. The toe kick is lower as we want the surface to be slightly lower than normal. This may make a future issue with dishwashers as all integrated dishwashers are designed to work with a 12cm toe kick, there are some which will work with 10cm but possibly not all of them. It will be left for a time when it may be needed. The carpenter also measured out the doors that he would be making plus the bathroom vanity cabinets as these are the bits that need to go in before we move in (at the end of March).

Basement Kitchen – This has now been installed. It was done by a kitchen company as they are cheaper than a good carpenter. The quality looks good, but I am not happy that the doors are lining up well enough. We spoke to the company and they said that they will tweak them once the counter top is in. As we have not ordered the counter tops yet, I am not sure when that will be.

Wardrobes – The wardrobes were measured yesterday and they will be installed at the beginning of March.

Furniture – We have decided on a Century table and sofas. We are just waiting on a price for some ottomans that we need to have built to fit. We are also not sure of the exact amount of spare material we need to order as we wish to re-upholster our existing dining chairs and we are waiting for the upholstery person to quote for us. We will order this as soon as we have the information. We decided not to get the counter stools from the states as the prices were just astronomical.

Beds – Exact measurements were taken for our headboard. This will be installed with the bed just before we move in.

Fireplace – The fireplace company came back to re-paint the rusty metal. I am hoping that this will solve the problem. We will find out when we start using it.

Lights – I collected all the lights and they are now being stored in our rented flat (apartment) so that they do not get damaged.

Doors – We are still waiting for the sample internal door. It may be delayed slightly as I heard that the person dealing with our order has just got up from sitting shiva. I wish him a long, healthy life.

Electricity – We now have an invoice for the change to the electricity – it is expensive! I tried to pay it this morning, but was told that I couldn’t as it hadn’t been opened for payment yet. We are also moving the electricity box to the front wall so that the electricity company can easily access it to take readings.

Railings – The interior stairway railings have been completed – but they are not being installed yet to protect them.
Most of the outside railings have been started, but we have asked them to hold off for the meantime on the front railing as we are moving the electricity box there. We are also making a space for the dustbin (garbage bin) and therefore do not want to do these railings until we know exactly what this area will look like. The railings company (A.Y.L.) are going to be doing a door for the dustbin as well.

Hammock – The railings guy knows someone who builds external play areas. We have received a quote and have ordered this today. We have requested a sample of the colour options for the hammock itself.

Design – As in every week, Tamar is the glue that holds everything together, makes the decisions that we request from her and keeps everything moving in the correct direction. Tamar is also taking us shopping tomorrow for curtains and possibly counter stools as well.

That’s all for now, we will do some shopping (or browsing) for the house on Friday morning as neither of us are working and the kids are in school. It will either be for the counter stools or possibly we will start looking at the bedding.

Adam & Joelle.

Contracts, Contracts, Contracts

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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.

Starting to make progress…

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Bank, basins, baths, Buy home, demolition, Dishwashers, doors, Home, House, interior designer, Israel, Kitchen, lawyer, legal, Mortgage, plumbing, property, renovation contract, Shopping, sinks, taps, tax, tiles

Time for an update…quite a big one actually…

We will start with the most stressful stuff ie mortgage.
The bank is blaming the seller’s lawyer for all the trouble and the lawyers are blaming the bank. We are stuck in the middle and running out of time. We (possibly) have found a solution to the current stalemate. All the seller’s documents are ready and completed with one minor correction that needs to be approved. Our lawyer is sending a courier – at our cost of course (only 250 NIS) – to the land registry office in Bet-El to obtain the last document we need which was sent a week ago but had not yet arrived as of yesterday. The lawyer will hopefully receive this on Sunday and take all the documents over to the bank which is only 5 mins walk away from their office. There is therefore still a small chance that we could get the mortgage in time…..we will see next week.

Design – not finalised but basically unchanged. We have confirmed with Tamar which windows we will be enlarging and she has arranged a meeting with the Iriya in 10 days time to discussed what we need to do to get these minor changes to the outside of the house approved.

Shopping – Adam went shopping last week with Tamar at Bar-Ami and they mainly looked at tiles and bathroom/plumbing. This gave us a shortlist of a few designs to choose from and we made a lot of progress. Today we both met with Tamar at a shop in Tel Aviv (Sharoni) and made lots of decisions. We have decided on tiles, the main themes are wood in the style of American walnut and a natural stone tile which is a greyish colour with a brown streak, tying it in with the wood theme. We have also chosen our toilets, bathroom taps, most of the shower heads and internal fittings, kids bath, most of the basins, kitchen sinks, and we even started discussing doors – we had a productive morning 🙂 We still have to decide on kitchen taps, our bath and a basin for the guest toilet.
On the doors – we have a basic design that we would like for the front door, we need to confirm if it is do-able (the company makes all their doors to order, and gives a 10 year money back warranty in the event of burglary with the door as the point of entry). Although we haven’t really started talking about internal doors, we put forward the option that the inside of the kids’ doors be a blackboard or whiteboard and we have been told that this company can do this – Both Tamar and the salesman liked the idea, we should ask for a commission…

We have all arranged to meet up again in 2 weeks but before this Tamar and Adam will meet to start on the kitchen cabinets and maybe windows and patio decking.

Let’s move on to the oven as we are talking about the kitchen…
Adam went to La Cucina in Tel Aviv which is the Ilve importer. He has decided on a 100 cm oven as the 120 is a bit too big. It will have 2 ovens – a 60 cm and 40 cm. The hob will probably have 6 rings, or 4 rings and a built-in griddle. It will be stainless steel to match the sinks. Joelle will look at it in 2 weeks time to confirm if she agrees. They are fairly expensive but cheaper than any other quality option sold in Israel, and with no extra shipping costs.

Dishwashers – since the non arrival and therefore cancellation of the dishwasher order before Pesach there is still no progress to report. It is very difficult to find the time right now to move on and talk to suppliers. We did finally get our money back after several phone calls to Best Buy.

Contractors – since the last update a third contractor has been round the house and we now have quotes in for all 3 of them for the demolition. We need to now make a decision about who to use, and will be talking to Tamar about this next week.

Regarding the actual property – The final tenants moved out a few days ago so the house is now empty and the garden is full of all the garbage. This is an improvement on how it was before. We hope the seller gets rid of the garbage before we get the keys which should be this coming Thursday…..
If not our lawyer will sort it out as according to the contract the house will be empty.

In case you didn’t notice the subtle comment above, I will repeat – the house will be ours in 6 more days 🙂
As we have moved on to ownership of the property – we spoke to the Iriya and now have a form to fill in that will give a 50% discount on arnona while the property is empty/being renovated.

6 days and counting down (our backwards counting of the omer)

Adam & Joelle.

Starting to fall into place

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Bank, Buy home, demolition, Dishwashers, fireplace, Home, House, interior designer, Israel, lawyer, legal, Mortgage, property, renovation contract, Shopping, tax, windows

I apologise for the lack of content over the last month. Pesach has kept us busy whether in home preparation, work preparation, keeping the kids entertained, cleaning up afterwards and with catching up at work after lots of time off.

Thankfully the movement forward in our house project has started to gather steam like a horse-drawn wagon out of control. We are just hoping that we can keep up and help encourage this movement in a direction that does not lead us over the proverbial cliff.

Where to start? Why not with the mundane – and then I will move on to the more interesting areas.

The bank… We still have no movement from the seller’s lawyer with respect to our required bank paperwork – which means that we cannot receive the mortgage, oh and we are supposed to pay the last payment on the 15th May and receive the keys then. Could be a little challenging paying the last payment when the money isn’t available to us. We will have to wait and see.

The property itself…the seller has now taken out the main kitchen. This is to our advantage in 2 ways. The first is that we would be taking out the kitchen anyway. The second is that this strengthens our case for buying the property as a single property rather than multiple properties within 1 building which obviously saves us money. The other issue with the property is the amount of rubbish that has been left there. The garden is full of old containers, a couple of artillery shells, 2 kitchens and obviously requires a major clean up. The loft area is completely full of rubbish. I even saw an original mac computer there plus a toy (I hope) gun. The storage rooms are also full of junk.

Lawyer… Our lawyer is going to speak directly with the bank to see how we can move on with the mortgage application. We will see what will happen with this. We are also going to speak to the lawyer about getting the seller to clear out all the junk.

Appliances… We bought a dishwasher 10 days before Pesach. I was promised it would arrive before Pesach. It didn’t arrive the week before Pesach, so I contacted the seller and was told that it would arrive on Sunday. I arranged to work at home on Sunday and at 3pm phoned the shop and asked when the dishwasher was going to arrive. After a twenty-minute delay I was told during Pesach – probably. I therefore cancelled the order completely and I still need to buy the dishwasher – the money is still not back in our account! Our microwave oven also died a few days before Pesach. This also hasn’t been replaced.

Design… Now for the interesting stuff (at least for us). We have a basic design. Close to 3 weeks ago, we met up with Tamar in Blacks Burger near to the Borsa in Ramat Gan. The trip is an hour for us – and about 20 minutes for Tamar. But let’s be fair to her – she had worked all day and then went out of her way to leave home and meet up with us. We spent a pleasant 2 – 3 hours sitting over a very slow supper (The new sweet potato fries are excellent) and discussing about 15 pages of design work over the 3 (ish) floor property.

I will start with mum’s section at the bottom and then work my way up. We had 3 basic designs. The one we originally decided to follow has the kitchen diagonally opposite the main entryway. The window above this will be enlarged and the living area will be nearer to the entrance. The Mamad is also in mum’s section so we will be adding a guest bed in there as well. The washing machine will be in our storage area (as a separated laundry room) and mum will be given a large shower but no bath in the bathroom. This has now been changed in stage 2 which I will discuss later on.

Floor 2. The entrance, lounge, kitchen, dining area and (up a half floor) the master bedroom. At the moment, the entrance into the house is directly into the hallway and is facing what will be the dining area. There is a covered but open porch area. We already pay arnona here so this actually counts as part of the house itself. We are planning on closing off this area with a large window on one side and to move the entrance around the corner (of the porch). This will mean that people cannot see straight into the house when they enter. Opposite the old entry door, we are removing the existing wall and creating a rectangular room for our main dining table. We should be able to fit in about 10-12 people in here without any issues, but will have the availability to move into the hallway and seat another 14 to 16 if we wish. The kitchen will be in the shape of a פ with integrated dishwashers and side by side european style fridge and freezer, two sinks and lots of cupboard space. The bottom leg of the ‘Pei’ will be a breakfast bar. The lounge area – we have discussed this area the most – and we are still not happy. The area is sunken, and is just a little too long in length with respect to the fairly short depth of the room. We have spoken about leveling out the floor so the floor is not sunken, but this is just not practical as there are doors leading to the garden in the area. We have spoken about partially raising the floor and we have also spoken about leaving the space as is and making the best use of the space that we can. All we know is that we wish to include some seating, a fireplace (there is one already here but not as we want it) and our upright piano. We also want to enlarge the windows on the outside wall as the view from there is stunning (well it is reasonable from a Ma’ale Adumim perspective). There are better Ma’ale Adumim views on the edges (rather than looking into the Wadi) as we have now, but the view is still good and looking upon nature. This is the only room in our section that we haven’t completely decided on the final direction of the room. Continuing upwards a half floor to our bedroom. The master suite level is going to have our room with large doors opening on to the garden, an en-suite bathroom with bath (and shower within the bath) as well as a walk-in cupboard.

Floor 3. The top floor. We are going to give the boys a bedroom each (Thank G-d) and there will also be a family/guest bathroom. We are going to include a study with a sofa bed in it for guests to stay as well as a playroom. The playroom is going to be fun. We are going to break through the ceiling to make the room very tall. The Wii will be in there as well as any standing games. There will also be a hammock half way up the wall for the kids to just veg while lying around. The reason that we are opening up the ceiling is so that we can create a play den in half of the loft. I envisage (not confirmed) that we will have a couple of low tables with bean bags around them for the kids to use as a play area. All the Lego, jigsaws and board games will be stored up there out of the way. To connect the two play areas we are still debating our options. We will either have a ladder, or a climbing wall – or both. We will see. We will also have the ability to add some beds in this area so that we can have extra guests.

The above design points were decided upon in the first meeting. We also made our comments and Tamar then integrated these into the designs. Our current status is that we are going to give mum a larger garden and therefore give her a very large window to let in the morning sun (where we had the kitchen in the original design). The area around this window will be the lounge area with the kitchen by the entrance door. This will give a larger kitchen – but possibly a smaller fridge. The washing machine and dryer will probably end up behind the kitchen allowing the storage area to be a lot larger.

In our lounge area we are still struggling to work out where everything will go. There was an option to put the fireplace under the main window as a long narrow fireplace – but we do not like this option, either in the idea, but more importantly we think it will destroy the look of the outside of the property. We would like to keep the fireplace where it is, just in the wall using the original chimney and not taking up space in the lounge.

The contractors… We have now spent time with 2 different contractors in the house. Both are called Shimon. So we will now call them collectively “Shimon squared”. One of these Shimon’s did the work in our friends’ house. Both do good work, but one charges less and his finishing is not so good. For example the walls may not be 100% straight – or plug sockets aren’t in perfect alignment. The other Shimon is more expensive – but you get a better quality finish. We walked through the property with “Shimon squared” separately discussing the demolition stage of our project. One of the contractors wrote detailed notes, the other asked Tamar to send them the plans and to mark on these which walls need to be demolished. Surprisingly, the team that requested the paperwork seemed more confident and future looking as a contractor. Demolition will also include removing the windows, floors and all pipework and electrical cables. We will probably also include part of the garden (without any plants) as it is part of the house and the rest of the garden will need to be completed after shmita. Both builders said that clearing the rubbish out of the property will cost a few thousand shekels and should really be covered by the seller.

Shopping… I am hoping to meet up with Tamar to spend half a day shopping on Wednesday. This has been planned – and I have booked the time off work.

The building schedule is as follows:

End of May Through to Mid June – We will start (and hopefully complete) the major demolition within the property. We are not yet enlarging windows. We will also continue to work on the plans and shopping during this time. The deadline for completing this will be the end of June

July – This is the Ramadan month for the (Arab) workers,  it is a hard time for them and therefore we will delay the start of the work until August. During July and the beginning of August our goal is to complete all decision-making, shopping, working plans, supplier choices, contractor choices.

Beginning/mid August (Post the nine days) – Start the building work.

That’s all folks – just another quiet month in the housing project.

Adam and Joelle.

Trudging along

Tags

Bank, Dishwashers, Home, House, Israel, Mortage, Ovens, Shopping

Again we have had a slow few weeks – but we are looking forward to some movement soon.

With the respect to the bank –  We should be getting the required insurance papers during this week (starting from May 1st). I went to the place on Yirmiyahu street, forgot the papers, obtained the paperwork that I thought was required and went back to the bank, only to find out that I still needed to get the “forgotten” paperwork stamped. I therefore had to go back to the same office a week later with the paperwork – and pay for the same work to be done again (and also pay for the paper stamping) which in total came to approximately 300 NIS. The seller’s lawyer still has our paperwork to be signed. We do not know when it will be signed – but we can’t get the mortgage without it and the mortgage department is closed over Pesach. The mortgage is moving – but it is slow. We also had to pay 3 months of rent today (we pay quarterly and we are a couple of days late). It is a shame to pay when almost have a house – but we do still have to rent until the end of this year at the least.

Kitchen – We have chosen a dishwasher – we just need to get the best price possible for it. We are getting either a Siemens Seimens sn65e001 or the siemens Seimens sn65e008. The prices are different because the first is an older model. Will probably buy this on Friday or Sunday. We have a new option for an oven. Ilve sells a Range oven that is 100cm and a little more than we wish to pay. But it is a better quality oven at a better price – just a little smaller. I need to go and look at the exact different options available to me and also to time ordering the oven correctly as if bought here will take 45 days to deliver. It may be longer to deliver if bought in the UK.

Design –  Tamar was ill last week and so did no work on the design. She is now almost finished with the basic design and we will have a meeting at the beginning of next week to discuss her different designs and then start selecting the parts that we like. We will then make a final design and Tamar will create our requirements list to different builders (We will see the builders work – but not sure if this will be before or after we get the quotes).

Anyway the progress is slow – but it is not non-existent.

Until a more exciting next week (We hope),

Adam & Joelle

 

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling.

Tags

Bank, Dishwashers, Home, House, Israel, Mortage, Ovens, Shopping

The last two weeks have gone quite quietly.
We are still waiting on designs from Tamar – but designing a full house is a large job. She has said that she is planning on contacting us this week.

We have started looking at the dishwasher again (as we are desperate at home for a new dishwasher). I spent some time looking online at Zap and collated a list of integrated dishwashers in our price range. We then looked at reviews of these on line and sent a short list of 3 to Tamar with the lowest price that we found. We will see what prices she comes back with from her “appliances guy”.

With respect to the mortgage – we took back the seller’s signed documentation to the bank and found out that he did not follow the instructions and added extra statements whilst removing other requirements without any permission. The bank has sent the documents back to him (via us) to get them re-signed correctly. Thankfully we still have close to 2 months before this is all needed. We also tried to get the list of mortgage payments signed off from the correct office on Yirmiyahu street – but it is closed every Tuesday. It is also only open between 8.30 and 12.30 every other day of the working week. No idea when someone is supposed to get there if they work full time. Adam will have to formally manipulate work again to complete this requirement – it is lucky his boss is very understanding and helpful.

The oven is on a back burner at the moment as we are awaiting information from Israeli gas fitters to see if we can use a UK oven with a European gas connection.

Last but not least – Purim – we took Shlach Manot to our soon to be new neighbours.

Everything is moving on nicely – it is just taking time – which is something that we currently have (especially as the exchange rate has just dropped and our money for the work is currently in GBP sterling).

More Blogging next week,

Adam & Joelle.

It’s all in the detail.

Tags

Bank, Design, Dishwashers, Home, House, Israel, Mortage, Ovens, Shopping

Hi all,

We had a pretty full few days with respect to the house.

On Friday morning we drove over to the Design Centre in Ramat Gan (3 minutes from Adam’s work) where we sat down with Tamar at a cafe and looked through the exact measurements of the house and discussed our expectations and requirements for the property in infinite detail for close to two hours. Tamar then took us around a minute sub-section of the design centre (shops!) to show us ideas and options. We had a very quick look at some options for kitchen cabinets, kitchen surfaces, window coverings (blinds and curtains), dining tables, sofas and wardrobes. No decisions were made at all – it was just a very brief overview to give us a better idea of the decisions we are going to be making. We did not look at windows as Tamar has a specific American quality windows company that she wishes to show us.

On to the Design Centre as a whole. It is huge. There is a gigantic (the child in me wishes to use the incorrect word ginormous) building filled with different large interior design shops. On the outside there is probably as many shops again within the same shopping complex. This is definitely a place to go for ideas – but it is pricey. In most cases, it should be possible to get exactly the same goods at a better price. It must be be a shopper’s or interior designer’s delight.

On to the oven. On Friday afternoon (full of zeal from the morning’s activities) I phoned up Rangemaster in the UK to discuss with them the detailed specifications of their ovens. Apparently the LPG pressure at the access point to the oven should be 27 for butane or 36 for propane. As the gas regulators here work at 30 it appears that Israel works at the same standard pressures as the UK. The biggest issue that we possibly have is that the gas connection to the oven is a 1/2 inch BSP male thread. There is no chance of this working here. Luckily, there is an adapter from 1/2″ BSP (British Standard Pipe Thread) to a 15mm European fitting. I looked at some examples of ovens here – and it looks like the ovens have an adapter which converts them from a 15 mm fitting to an Israeli fitting. Tamar is going to speak with a gas fitter to confirm that the gas pressure is acceptable and that we can use a UK oven here from that perspective and then I will order the 1/2″ to 15mm fitting so that we can confirm we can connect the oven up to the gas. A £12 fitting is a lot cheaper than a £2000 oven!

As we will be required to ship the oven from the UK – I spoke to the company that arranged our original lift to Israel. They can ship the oven to us for £550 if we get the it delivered to them. We thought this was a bargain (we were expecting about £1000). But, we can ship up to 3 cubic metres of goods for £750 – which would allow us to bring another 3 – 4 big electrical appliances as well as a new BBQ and a smoker if we so desired. This is of interest to us!

Mortgage – We found out yesterday that all the documents that were required signatures by the seller are at his lawyer! We will be trying to collect them later. We also received the mortgage valuation today.

Dishwashers – this has taken a back burner this week as we still haven’t found what we want. We are still looking – but will probably try to catch the pre-pesach sales. If we are lucky we may even get a new dishwasher for Pesach.

We are now waiting for Tamar to come up with some amazing designs that we will look at which should give us some more direction and then we can make some decisions…..

Have a couple of good days till we chat next.

Adam & Joelle