Impossibilities

by lagor on April 7, 2012

After months of waiting, calling, texting, emailing and meetings the bullet is bitten.
In our region, building a non traditional house is too expensive.
We’ve been talking to several builders/contractors and none wanted to build what we wanted them to build.
The materials we chose (compressed earth bricks) are unfamiliar and therefor to risky. The I-beams are doable but (very) expensive. Even the foundation turned out to be quite the undertaking.

As it turned out, when everything was said and done we could have our house, but it would cost us dearly.., almost half a million euros dearly (including the land).
Next to the fact that we’d never get a mortgage covering the costs.., it would mean we’d be paying for this a long time to come.
Plus.., this would include compromises we didn’t really want to make.

Making a tough decision when you have no real options is not as tough as it might seem. It’s no fun, but it’s not hard.

The house we planned, the house Lotte designed, the house we have on our wall as an inspiration, the house in which we already have invested so much (time, emotions and money), the house we told you about, the house which embodied our dream will not be build.

It’s sad really…, in the end it’s the reluctance of Men to challenge themselves which was a decisive factor.

I think Hamlet said it best: “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.”

This part is often quoted and based on this you’d imagine the possibilities are boundless.., anything can be done…, well yes.., until you meet the limitations of these godlike creatures.., Hamlet goes on saying.., “… and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
Indeed, sometimes people are nothing more than dust.

Tradition is the bane of progress…

We will find a solution, we will move on, we will be innovative, flexible and adaptable.

We will let you know…

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It’s Not Easy Building A Wall

by Laila on February 2, 2012

This week February started with the promise of receiving offers from contractors. But like those tv programs about building your own house show you that things don’t always go as planned we of course have not received any.

Mistakes

I have often wondered if the people who participate with these programs are all stupid for making the same mistakes but now I figured that some mistakes are not mistakes at all, they are just the way things go and you just don’t know that and you think “I am sure that that won’t happen with my build”.

So what did happen, well our consultant John called the contractor Vincent who then told him that he did not want to work with the pressed earth blocks we were planning to buy because he could not find any expertise, no house has ever been build with these blocks, walls yes, Finovens yes but Vincent was in no hurry to burn himself on using a product which he didn’t know and couldn’t guaranty.

Unfortunately Vincent had these blocks since half December and just now decided to mention this fact. Believe me Vincent is one of the good guys. He is willing and able to listen to a foreign woman speaking basic French with surprising patience and he even understands that we would like to build a house as ecological as possible.

John and I had a talk with another contractor, a big one here in the neighborhood who kind of smirked at the idea of building a house with strawbales and asked the standard question about mice. I really hope Vincent comes up with a good offer because I can see a future of discussions if I have to work with this big contractor.

Instinct

So back to the pressed earth blocks. I kind of saw it coming, I had this feeling, this premonition. The suplier told me in October that as soon as I could I should order the blocks because they had a long drying period.

The blocks are expensive and I was hesitant to order them. I kept pushing it forward, waiting for the offer from contractors to see if we could even afford them but time was going so fast. If we even wanted to use these blocks then I should have ordered them at least in January for them to be dry in April/May.

I got really nervous about it but still I did nothing. Turns out that sometimes, yes only sometimes doing nothing is the best thing to do.

Replacement

Now Lotte was back in the game; searching for a suitable replacement. She and we settled on sand-lime bricks ( Couldn’t really find a good translation for it from Dutch so I really hope these are the correct bricks) with isolation. I called Vincent who enthusiastically told me he knows the material well and he will get the offer as soon as possible.

To be honest, for me it is a relieve that we are choosing a material wildly available and known here in Belgium, although the pressed earth blocks would have been the best choice for us it was not in the cards.

So I guess this is just one of the many things that will probably change with this build, it is for us to adapt or stick to our guns, at least we are one very little step forward….hopefully.

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This is the year of the build

January 9, 2012

One way or another the building of our house is going to happen this year. We hope with the materials we have planned but it all depends on the offers we are going to have from the builders. Last week I went with our consultant to Ecobati to talk with someone who can organize a [...]

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