Casa Neroli

We were up bright and early, the sun was already shinning and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so a good breakfast was in order, a brew of, yes, coffee and into the car and set off to our site, with the question “Will there be any workmen on site?”

As we turned on to the track from the main road, I noticed a builder’s truck opposite the turnoff and jokingly said “Oh I wonder if that’s our builder” and now he’s saying “Oops better get there the English are here!” As we turned on to our site, we saw that in fact we did have a builder! Yes a single builder complete with wheelbarrow and bucket, pouring amounts of water from the well into the holes in the ground, so maybe the truck was nothing to do with us! He came over and in Portuguese and with hand gestures we were able to ascertain that he was waiting for the cement mixer lorry to arrive. So the builder at the edge of the main road was to do with us and turned out to be his mate waiting for the cement lorry to show him the way.

A short while later, this huge cement mixer came up the lane and stopped at the edge of our site. There seemed to be a lot of head scratching and gesturing between the lorry guys and the builders, obviously discussing how to deliver the cement. A little later the lorry backed down the lane again, to a point where it could turn around and then reversed back up the lane, God these drivers are good.

In the time it took, the two builders had opened up a new track onto the plot from the lane and the lorry was able to back into a position where it could make its delivery.

For about an hour the cement came down the shoot and the builder’s wheel barrowed it away and tipped it into the shuttered areas. That done, everyone just disappeared, well I guess the cement needs to set.

Whilst this was happening we were getting on with the annual clearing of the winter growth and quickly found that we also had a borehole. This had obviously only been completed at the end of the previous week and whilst Marco was aware, Paulo the architect had not been advised so nor had we. All this was ok; it was pleasing to see that things were progressing.

So now we have electric and water. Progress!

The journey down was pretty uneventful, thank goodness, only to say that we started to try and share the driving a little more, but being a bit of a control freak it is very difficult to let someone else, even if it is the beloved other half to take control of the wheel.

We arrived at our site on the Monday around midday, to carry out first inspections. Any builders? Nope none of them about, but then I guess it is lunchtime and we know they do tend to have long lunches. After a quick review we could see that some shuttering on the foundation pillars have been done, so some progress I guess. It was weird to see an area that when we were last here that was covered in trees, old vines and weeds was now naked of vegetation and a building site.

We were tired after our long journey and it was after all Teresa’s birthday as well, so we decided that we would just collect the bits from our hut that we needed and make our way over to the apartment, especially as since our last visit Marc and Meike had sold Quita Ponta Nova to John and Fanny who we thought were French, but it turned out that Fanny was French but John was in fact English, although he had been living in France for many years and we hadn’t met them yet.

Opening up the hut, we were pleasantly surprised that we had an electrical connection, good news the power had been installed and was obviously now certified and turned on. Whist this was probably necessary for the building it was also going to be very useful for us. The installation is temporary as you can see, eventually this will be pulled back to the house, but it does at least mean we can get some power. We could also see the meter housing at the edge of the site was a bit rough, (Later discussions with the builder revealed that this was due to the wet weather when they were installing and they would tidy this all up later in the project).

We left the site around 3:00pm and drove over to Quinta Ponta Nova and met with John and Fanny. Well we need not have worried; they were lovely people and had only moved in just 10 days before we arrived. We think they had spent most of the 10 days getting the apartment in order ready for our arrival rather than getting their own accommodation sorted. They had done a great job, so we unpacked, opened a bottle of champagne that Teresa’s mum had given her for her birthday and settled down for the evening.

Bliss!

It’s been a long hard winter and nearly 6 months since we have been to the site, but at last it’s time to set sail and make our way to Portugal again. So car loaded with the eggs, bacon and copious amounts of coffee, it’s off to KFC for dinner and across to the port at Newhaven for the 11:00pm sailing to Dieppe.

Lets start with a spring is sprung! Here’s a photo of one of the fig trees starting to produce fruit for this year, always good to see the signs of spring.

We have moved forward again a little since our last posting, but the bad weather the past few days has once again hampered progress. You will see from the latest few photos here that we do now have some concrete and the start of some metal work, but you will also see the horrible low cloud and wet ground. This does have some benefit I guess in it gives time for the concrete to set completely and we are progressing, (ever the optimist).

If you have been reading this blog from the start, you will know that we always try to highlight the good and the bad equally as we progress. At this point we feel that once again we should highlight the importance of getting some good project management for the project. In our case we are using the architects for the project management; this we feel has been one of our best decisions, they have been involved right from the concept stage so are as interested to see a successful completion to the project as we are.

However nice it would be, we can’t visit the site as often as the project may require and see for ourselves the progress. Having trusted people to manage the build on your behalf is unquestionably an advantage. In the main they can answer any queries from the builder quickly and because they visit on a regular basis we get these regular photos of progress, which of course we can share with you.

Having the architect project managing is most definitely a good idea and at this point we would most definitely recommend this route.

Well there hasn’t been a lot of action in the past week or so, as we had our first obstacle to overcome, apparently the ground is quite soft and the builder felt that the foundations should be deeper than indicated on the plans and that he would prefer to add some additional columns in the walls to increase the stability and make for a stronger construction especially as we have a reasonably long open plan area and the additional columns would allow for the main roof supporting beam down the length to be a slightly smaller profile.

Paulo our Project Manager and architect agreed but felt that the change should be first approved by the structural / stability engineer that was involved in the design and plans. All seems very sensible to us. On the down side it has delayed progress by a few days, but on the up side we are told there is no change to the cost or the overall design of the house. The additional pillars would be contained within the current wall profiles.

The first modifications of the drawings were reviewed on Friday, but Paulo noticed that some of the new pillars were not in a good position, so the plan is being reviewed again over the weekend and he should get the final corrections on Monday, so all being well, things should start to progress again from Monday.

We are planning to be there ourselves in a couple of weeks so it will be great to see it for ourselves.

Here you can see the road in to our site from the local village.

You can also see a side view of the new electrical connection box, this still needs to be rendered but no point until the construction of the house is completed.

This is the track on to our plot from the main road, you can just see the hut down the track a bit and where the new drive will be into the parking area of the new house.

Here are a few more pictures from the 21^st, as you can see not a lot of progress.

This is a momentous day in the birth of Casa Neroli ! We heard yesterday that Marco had started, today Paulo the Project Manager and Architect visited the site to check that everything was going to be built in the correct position, and provided us with our first set of photographs.

If you look back to our blog at the end of last year “Decision made and next stages” you will see the site as we left it last October, as you see, today it already looks very different.

Keep checking back for regular updates as we go through the next year. Cant wait to get there again soon to see it all for ourselves. We are just a little excited, can you tell?

The weather in Portugal has been a bit rough over the past few weeks, which had the inevitable affect on the builder finishing current work and getting started on our build, but today we had an email from the Architect (Project Managers) that Marco the builder had moved his team onto our build, and today they had started clearing the site and marking out the plot for the foundations.

Paulo the Project Manager is going to visit the site tomorrow and check that position and sizes are all correct before the foundations are laid, he has promised some photos.  Exciting eh!

Well we are well into February and things are very slow in getting going, but we suspected this would be the case, even when setting the dates with the builder we discussed some flexibility around the date to allow for the weather. On top of this generally Portugal has been suffering the same effects of the inclement weather we have been experiencing here in the UK, nowhere as much as the UK, but enough that it is holding things up.

As mentioned in previous blogs, the first task before any construction can really get going is to get some basic utilities on site e.g. Water and Electricity. We have heard the installation for the electricity has been done, not sure what this actually is, but we assume some form of box has been installed to the site and cables / wires are somewhere, I expect we find out at some point. We are now waiting for the “Certiel” to approve the installation so the electricity can be turned on. The bad weather is holding this up understandably if they have to restore power to some customers, like in the UK. I guess at some point they will need some details from us about paying the bills, e.g. bank details, but we will let you know what happens.

The second bit .e.g. Water, this requires the drilling of the borehole and we heard that this was all scheduled in for last week, but again due to the bad weather this has been delayed.

The weather here in the UK seems now to be improving so hopefully it is in Portugal as well and we will get a more favourable update later this week.

Also the licence fee for the build still has to be paid to the council, but the licence will have an expiry of 1 year from the date of payment, you can apply again, but to maximise the 12 months, the architects (Project Management team)  are hanging on until the “Certiel” approval is achieved as it not needed before.

Well it’s 2014 and going to be the year of the build, amazingly this is probably some 6 years ahead of our original timelines. This of course is excellent news, but of course has also created its own pressures, however we are ready and this week has seen us putting the final actions to enable the build to start next month.

As mentioned in earlier postings, one of the items we still had to budget for was the licence (council taxes) to allow the build to start, we had little idea of what this would be, only that the architect felt it should be between €1000 and €3000. The good news is that we budgeted for the higher figure and the final bill was near enough in the middle. Just needed to transfer the funds and the architect will settle the bill with the council for us. We can’t recommend enough the importance of finding a architect / Project management team that know what they are doing and are prepared to be flexible, so important when doing a project like this where you can’t be in the country and available all the time.

We also received quotes back via the Builder and architect / Project Manager for the Borehole and the Electricity connection work, which of course we will need to get both laid on for the builder to be able to build.

The Borehole was very much in line with what we had been advised, but we noted that we would still need to budget for the pipe and pumps on top. The price quoted would allow for a depth of 100 metres although they could go to 200 metres, but that would of course attract a further charge, basically they charge by the metre. If you are following this because you might do something similar, then you should budget about €3000 at 2014 prices. We will let you know about the pump and pipes as soon as we know, but this can’t be worked out until the Borehole is drilled and we know how deep they had to go and what pressure there is to know what size pumps etc we will need.  Knowing that we have wells on the lower terrace that always has water and is only about 15 metres down from where the house is going then we am sure they will find it OK. Let’s hope so, we’ll let you know!

The Electricity work was a bit different, we didn’t have a clue how much this was going to be, and even the architect struggled with this one so we plucked a number out of the air, which turned out to be somewhat light, in fact about half what we needed but as the tax for the council was half what we budgeted for and the values were about the same we balanced so we are OK. The only bit we are a bit unsure on if the electric company e.g. EDP will charge a connection fee as well or if this is included, again we will let you know. Again if you are following this because you are doing something similar and you want to know the costs please email me at ian@casaneroli.com and I will let you know. The only reason not to show it here is that it is dependent on what you have done, e.g. over or underground, type of connection box etc, so to show a general number may be misleading.

The last item was to pay the deposit to the builder; the contract said that this needs to be with him 30 days before construction can start. We are sure this is flexible but we didn’t want anything to cause any delays and as the Euro to Sterling exchange rate is quite favourable at this time, around 1.20 it was a good time for it to happen.

So the final action for the week was to make the deposit payment to the builder, pay the architect the money for the licence and put enough money into our Portuguese bank account for us to be able to pay for the Electric and Borehole as they get done. We had agreed with the builder that he would pay for these when needed and we would settle with him accordingly. This would ensure the good pricing that he had negotiated on our behalf and of course he can then co-ordinated it happening in line with him starting the build.

So off to World First again, once again a first class service was provided and the money was in the respected accounts within a matter of hours. We can’t recommend these guys enough, We are sure others work just as well, but this service is so smooth and easy to use, it just makes the whole business less stressful. Well done World First.

Well that’s it for now, we just need to sit back and wait now for the architect and builder to get on with it.

Can we be that patient?

Well at last the contract for the build is signed and making its way back to the builder for counter signing. We received the contract a couple of weeks ago, but of course it was entirely in Portuguese! We had anticipated this and had already lined up a translation service in preparation. It took about a week to translate and it was very pleasing to see that there were no surprises in the document.

To be honest we never thought there would be, but of course having to sign every page it is extremely important to understand what is being said. Don’t want to be signing our life away anymore than we are already eh!

So hopefully that’s all OK. We now just need to wait for the builder to sign, don’t see that being an issue as we haven’t changed anything and he complied the contract in the first place.

Next – The next stage is paying the deposit. That is all scheduled for January 2014, so next month, that is going to be a momentous stage in the process, after all the years of saving and seeing accounts rise, all of a sudden large chunks are going to be going out and balances reduced, but hey that’s why we have been saving.

The architect is also starting to action the other items we need to get moving on, over and above the builder but equally just as important and mentioned in earlier blogs. The first of these is the licence from the local Council. This we need to build, but couldn’t apply for until we had appointed a builder as is requires details of builders operating licence and insurance etc. The architect has approached the council for the cost but we now have to wait, we understand it could be anything but should hopefully be between €1000 and €3000, well I guess we will find out soon enough.

The other items we need to action are getting the electric connected and water/borehole drilled, as the builder is going to need these to be able to build. Again the architect, who is now also our project management, is working with the builder and the suppliers to get this organised. We just have to wait for the costs to arrive and then pay the bills I guess. We have budgeted for both these items but it is a pure guess, let hope we are in the right ball park. Again I guess we will find out soon enough.