Category: Site preparation

brajkovici

Opening the building site

A wise man said to me recently: it’s all just a construct of mind. He was referring to the world as we see it and the actions we take according to those views, but the same goes for the limit we invented separating one year from another for example. It does help to have those kind of reminders built in our culture and society to remind ourselves to pause from time to time, to review where we are and whether or not the direction we’re going to is where we actually want to go.

So where were we with the renovation?

The house was stripped of everything we could bare to miss.


Not many things went in the desired direction on this project but on a good day I still consider myself quite lucky. I was amazed with all the work Marko, our Croatian partner architect did in the struggle to keep the dragons of bureaucracy happy in the quest for a legal renovation.

On top of that we stumbled upon the perfect contractor to renovate the stone walls. A small family business from Sutivanac, a village 30 km away. The dad (Mladen), the son (Kristijan) and their young employee from Slavonija (Domagoj). They have an incredible range of experiences renovating stone buildings in the vicinity for the last 40 years and are one of the rare companies in the surroundings that can validate their knowledge with a conservationist license. They care about quality, strive to make lasting details and there is unpretentious beauty in their technically superb solutions. They are amazing and as fast as greased lightning on top of that.

The moments we shared solving problems over ‘voćkanje’ (a break in the afternoon munching home grown fruit) or talking about daily occurrences while cleaning the joints of the stone walls will go down in my memory as pure jewels of quality cooperation when life and its struggles make sense.

I did realize a while ago it is extremely important who you work with. Because no matter how carefully you plan things, there are always unexpected situations that occur and to be able to rely on people doing their best to solve the issues in those situations is priceless.

So what else have we gotten apart from the perfect contractor?

A crane

skela (=scaffolding)

     

a fridge


limenka (=a box to keep our belongings safe)


a moving office with the best view ever

     

and two boards clearly stating we’ve turned into a building site!

 

Looking over the shoulder I was throwing some last gazes on the year behind us. Doing this type of project was/is really hard from time to time and I am truly happy we made it this far. I have yet to thank everyone involved making my dream come true endowing professional or personal assistance. Many thanks to everyone that expressed an interest for this project in one way or another as well. I wouldn’t get as far as I did without any of you so my deepest appreciation for your support. I’m gathering my spirits to finish the rest of the stone house renovation this year and if you would like to be a part of it in any way, let me know.

Wish you all a colourful year full of hope and magic. It’s nice to get some of both from time to time 🙂

brajkovici

Remove everything that we would not like to keep (Part 3)

I’ve gotten some surprised responses to my last post. How much of the existing are we keeping, will there be anything left at all?

There is a reason behind every subtraction, of course. Some of the removals of existing material and structures needed to happen because the time took too much of the stability and safety away – the state of these wooden trams that were supposed to support the roof say something about the roof construction and why we decided to remove it.

     

Other removals happened because of the vision to create an enjoyable space that would use the traditional techniques of building typical for these parts of the world, and combine it with contemporary knowledge and desires about the space and materials.

I promise to dedicate my next post to the architectural vision behind all of the bold removals, but let me first finish describing what else we decided wasn’t worth keeping.

Wait, is there more?

 

Removing the partition walls.

     

 

Removing the bigger part of the east wall.

      

 

Removing the plaster.

      

     

 

Removing the floor, the asphalt (!) and the giant rocks underneath them.

     

 

Removing the rats.

    

brajkovici

Removing everything that we would not like to keep (Part 2)

I am always amazed about how many things are needed for every building. I’m not even going to start talking about all the preparations and bureaucracy and permits, not in this post anyhow, but how much material is required to construct it, how much more for the fixtures, furniture, decorations. That makes the consideration about what type of materials to use in construction even more relevant. This is a really small house we’re talking about and still took quite some time to remove all of the layers of history that were piled upon it.

 

Removing the furniture (remodelled by the rats and time).

     

 

Removing the roof of the storage annex.

            

 

Removing the roof of the house.

    

     

 

For the last 29 years, stepping through the doorway into the house meant entering a quite dark and small space. Now, opening that same door meant stepping into light covered with blue sky. Quite a surreal feeling.

 

brajkovici

Phase 1: remove everything that we would not like to keep

When my parents bought the house 30 years ago, it has already been in use for a good 40 years. You notice it is situated in the midst of nature because we’ve had everything from rats, lizards, snakes, snails, spiders, scorpions, sheep and a dormouse at a certain time in the house or on the premises. Not to mention the plants – they just grow and grow.

The house has kept all of its residents in a more or less happy co-inhabitance for the last 70 years. Apart from rats nobody ever did any noteworthy renovations on it and it is beginning to show. But don’t worry; we’ll get the house back from the animal kingdom somehow.

Enough with the talk already: here are some pictures of the building site preparations 🙂

 

1. Removing the caravans*

    

*Special thanks to my dear parents 🙂

 

2. Removing the external toilet

    

 

3. Removing the plants