History can teach us nothing

Someone wise once said that the key to life is learning from your mistakes without at the same time making a whole bunch of new ones. It might have been Yoda. Or Jennifer Aniston (left,) in Friends. I don’t know, they both look the same to me. There's no snappy intro to this blog post because I haven’t written anything longer than my name for about 18 months, so apologies in advance. I’m a bit rusty.

Er...we’re building again!

Now those twos of you who read my blog 5-6 years ago when we were doing this the last time will be scratching your heads and thinking “what? After all the heartache and stress of their last build project, and after coming out the other side with a successful business, why on earth would they choose to go through all that shite again?”

The answer(s) are below:

George, Evie, and a very big cake

Since my last post way back in April 2013, we’ve had two new additions to the family – three if you also count Peggy the dog - and 5 into 2 bedrooms (which is what we’re currently renting while our villa is full of guests) just doesn’t go – at least not in any way that will ensure a good night’s sleep for all. Expansion is the only way forward. And our idea of expansion looks like this:

Yep, it's a whole other house. We’ve sold our place in Norwich, cut our last bricks and mortar ties with the UK and will now build another house house here in Montenegro. Frighteningly, only marginally smaller than the first one, it’s a 4-bedroom, 3 bathroom design that is going to sit alongside Villa Miela (which would be to the right in the picture above) and ensure that we have somewhere to live that is a) large enough for our growing family and b) on our own land so that we can run our business on site.

Terrifiying, eh?

So far, our prior experience has stood us in good stead. Rather than use red crayon and then maths paper to design the house ourselves, this time we’ve hired an architect. Rather than choosing the first builder to drunkenly scribble down a ballpark quote, this time we’ve hired a team that came recommended by a friend and appear to know what they’re doing. Rather than having to use a friend to translate for us (a friend who, comically, can’t actually speak English but he didn’t let this deter him from giving it a go), this time we can speak to the builder direct, and understand each other reasonably well. Rather than cost up the project with no real idea of what it might cost or how long it might take, this time we’ve budgeted properly and even allowed sufficient time to get phase one complete by the time we open for business again next April (we hope).

Well done us, eh?

Well, we’ll see. The plan is to get the outside of the house watertight and finished by April so that the east side of Villa Miela doesn’t look like a building site. Any interior progress will be seen as a bonus, with the minimum involving one working bathroom and working kitchen so that we can live in it even if it’s not 100% finished. Proper finishing, landscaping and all that jazz can then be done either quietly during the summer or properly and quickly the following winter.

We’re starting it all a little later than would be ideal, but progress on day 1 was promising. Rather than a team of unskilled doofi excavating by hand, Musa has brought in a digger, arriving bang on time and already achieved more in a few hours than the aforementioned band of berks managed in several weeks back in October 2008.

Powering over our wall and down the terraces at a frankly disturbing angle, we’ve already laid waste to 2 fig trees, one mulberry tree (boo, but they were all in the way) and several old stone walls. Speedy and scary all in one. Days two and three brought further good news - site preparation and - glory be - clearance that involved tidying up rather than simply chucking stuff down to the lower levels. We’ll see what derails our progress first – time, money or the weather – but this is at least a vaguely promising start. Musa reckons they’ll need five good days to finish the septic chamber and the supporting wall that will underpin the entire structure. Seems optimistic to this Balkan building cynic, but you never know. I'll let you know in a couple of weeks...