The Construction of our House

They say Rome wasn't built in a day, and whoever has had workers around their living space for a long time, might actually appreciate the heaviness of those words. Of course, comparing our house to the eternal city, doesn't really hold any water, but when you see what was there before it, you will know why I chose those words.

I took these images over the course of a couple of months. I wanted to document the building of the side-kick house, as I call it, since our main house was built much earlier. There are many more images from this time period, but I only selected a few to show you.

click on the images for a bigger view 

This is the finished house as it looks now. I have shown it to you before, and I'm showing it again here, because I want to make a contrast between it and the structure that was there before in the next image.

This is what was there before. This old house was destroyed in World War II and deteriorated over the years. It had a very unfortunate position, between the other houses, and the owners had a hard time selling it to someone.

After we purchased the lot, our wall on the left side in this image had to be taken down, and the cleaning process began.

The remains were destroyed and bit by bit the stone was taken away.

It was a grueling process, since parts of the old house were "glued" to the neighboring house. Great attention had to be payed, but after a couple of days, everything was cleaned up.

Then the rest of the old walls were taken down, including our own walls, that had to be repositioned once everything was built.

A glimpse into our old garden. Beni was of course there during every step of the way. :) In truth, we had to be extra careful with him, since the walls were down and he could roam freely, and also run away, which he didn't of course.

The views for the next couple of weeks were grey and dirty. Not a pretty sight at all...

...even from the inside...

Eventually construction on the house started, and it was build rather quickly. We had a great team of workers and architects that worked full time, 6 days in the week. The construct of the house was build over the period of a month.

The roof was a extra detail we came up with. In order to have a sense of privacy, a steep roof was constructed, that shields the garden from the other houses around  us.

You can see that better in this shot.

Eventually the two houses looked at each other, and the long process of the exterior works began.

Looking back at it (and maybe for you too) it was a big and dirty process with so many decisions to be made.

Eventually the house was built, windows and doors put and, an the facade was painted and we could finally focus on the fine details, and making everything look pretty. We really needed that :)

I want to close this rather long posts with some after shots. The interior of the house is still a work in progress. We are waiting for the rest of the furniture and kitchen, which are being hand made, and then it's time for the decor and other fine details.

Now Beni has a big wide space to play in. :)

This is the living room.

Other side of the living room, with an intruder peaking in.

The bedroom, with an exit to the balcony.

Dining room and on the left side is the kitchen, but I'll show those parts in another post, when there is a kitchen to show.

Thank you all for stopping by. I hope this was of some interest to you. I wanted to photograph the process and make a series of images like this. (I also did this for the main house, so maybe, if you are interested I can make a post on that too).