junoproject

Just as work on the house is finally getting underway, we got some bad news. This week Roel, our neighbor and project manager, came over with the estimates he'd received from 3 building companies for the work that needs to be done on the house (upstairs and downstairs) to finish it off according to our Master Plan. It seems that we drastically underestimated what this whole thing is going to cost. To the tune of almost 50%! Meaning our current budget will only pay for half of the work we want to have done. Oopsie!

So it's was back to the drawing board for us...

This problem could be tackled in one of 3 ways. First, we could try to find the money somehow. This would mean either sucking up to the bank some more (and realistically, there isn't a chance in hell they are going to lend us more money) or hit the parents up for some financing. This didn't really seem like the grown-up thing to do. I really do think that at 35, you should be able to handle things like this without having to run to mommy and daddy (unless there is really no other option). So that option was out.
Our second option, and the one we tried first, was to strip down the Master Plan to a bare minimum. But as we were whittling away at all the great ideas our architect had come up with, it seemed we weren't really getting anywhere. There's only so much you can strip out of a plan without totally destroying a good thing. So this, too, was not a realistic option.
Which leaves us with option 3: dividing this whole project into 2 stages. Both Björn and I have always been big fans of instant satisfaction. And we're pretty good at making it happen for us. We're not used to having to wait. But in this case it seems worth it.  So a new plan was born. Now, instead of finishing the whole thing off in one go, we're going to keep the upstairs pretty much the way it is now, with 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, and finish off the downstairs only as far as our budget will allow. For the time being the downstairs will just be one big loft-like room, without any further subdivision into bedrooms or bathroom. And then somewhere down the line, we'll be able to finish the whole thing off according to the original Master Plan. But in the mean time, it will be livable and we won't be giving up on the things we really want for the house. We'll just be postponing them for a while. It'll be good for us. A much-needed lesson in patience, as it were...

This is what the downstairs looked like last week. In the week since these were taken the reinforcement for the concrete flooring was put in and the concrete floor will be poured in this Monday.

This is will be the entrance to the downstairs, where the stairs will be.

This is the main area under the living room, soon to be Björn's office. The wooden boxes are the neighbor's casings for the foundations. Ours will be stuck in between these, but with the openings on our side.

This is the back of the house, soon to be my office. It will have windows in the back wall and the wall to the right. To the left is the neighbors back; the concrete floor has already been put in there.

This is what the reinforcements look like before the concrete is poured in. (Sneak peek at the neighbor's basement.)

And this is the sad state of the old foundations. You can really see why this whole thing is necessary.

On the bright side: the Dutch government has decided to extend their tax break on construction man-hours to jobs contracted up to July 1st (instead of jobs finished by July 1st), which means if we contract this whole thing by July 1st we only pay a 6% tax on the work done, instead of 19%. Saves us a much-needed wad of cash!

So eventhough it is not all good news, if really feels okay. Some adventure...

More pictures here.