Baby number 4!

So this is our baby!!

 

And thats me standing in the garden.
I have made a board with the floor plan and other 3-d views and constantly refer to it when dreaming up my interiors.

The house will all be white except (hopefully) for the tall grey wall which we want to do in exposed concrete.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the exterior/garden. I find it much harder to imagine the garden than the interior. I know that I want lots of green; a herb garden and some raised beds for vegetables.
The girls will have a play area at the back and we would like a sort of outdoor kitchen which will include a barbeque and a pizza oven. But im finding it hard to put all these ideas together to make a beautiful garden. And a big question is whether to have grass.

september 2012

 what a view! i really hope we get to keep it. 

a few more months have gone by and last week we sent in the plans for permission!

architect

It has been a while but we have been busy! We have been in search of an architect. I thought the task of finding someone would be easier especially as we know what we want to do. But it took a while to find the right combination of a great connection, closeness to the site and of course talent.
We have found our architect, actually they are a couple and we are so excited to begin...

The site is taking shape and will very soon be ready for building on. It will take us a few months to get to that stage but it is beginning.

Obsessing is probably a fitting word for my time spent on Pinterest looking for inspiration material.

But it is so much fun and helps me become more focused on ideas. I have become quite obsessed with the floor plan.

It is very hard to leave it alone but I realised I need to start sketching in 3d. This is very close to what we want. We will see what the architects come up with!

how to build?

I havent written here for quite a while.. not for the lack of activity, in fact, the opposite is true. We have been busy looking at different building methods. I havent mentioned yet but we are really, really in to the idea of building an eco home. 

We started looking at steel framed houses - which claim to be ecological. This method is very common in the US but here, in Israel, it is less common and even frowned upon. Many people here like what they know - a wall made of blocks. Maybe it is thought of as more secure or maybe its a case of not wanting to change what has been done for years; probably a case of the two.

In terms of cost, it is more or less the same as conventional building but it supposedly takes half the time (around 6 months). The thermal values are very good as well as the acoustics. It is a very clean way of building, the cost of the build is known from the start and this doesnt change. People here do not like the plaster walls and prefer something more solid. 

We were told yesterday that the new blocks had much better thermal values than the old ones, with or without extra insulation. Our budget for this build is quite modest but we are trying to make it good quality. It is all a little overwhelming.

 our plot is in the middle of this row

Yesterday we visited the site and found they had advanced so much since we were last there. The tractors busy at work helped calm the nerves.
 

We are still waiting to sell our apartment and nothing can actually begin until it has been sold. But we want to use this time wisely and prepare everything that needs to be done.

More soon...