Everything’s going up!

The good news is that everything’s going up fast – roof, walls etc.  The bad news is that so are the costs.  The building is way more expensive than we’d budgeted and things are getting very scary.  We finally had our meeting with Miso (with the invaluable assistance of Mil – thank you buddy!) to get a final total of what we owe him to complete the build and we are now seriously panicking about how we will finish this building and continue to live here.

How did this happen? Well, it’s a combination of things.  Mil always told us that Miso’s quote was for rough build only but we assumed (Big lesson! Never do – what do they say: It’s makes an ass of me and u?!) that it included the rendering of the building inside and out and the final skim on the floors.  It didn’t and we should have checked and been more thorough about going through the quote line by line and then working out what was NOT included.  The foundations disaster in the beginning added more cost.  Yes, we have ended up with 2 valuable rooms underneath the building but they weren’t in the budget.  The knock on effect of having to go up so high was there was a ruddy great drop from the shower block to ground level in places – this necessitated the building of 2 sets of steps… more cost.  We thought we’d be able to take more materials up ourselves and therefore save money but much of the metal was too big to go in the van and all of the sand (and there’s been a lot!) had to be trucked up, each trip costing us 25 euros just for the transport.  Miso has tried to be fair – he’s done some stuff for free and we have no complaints about his workmanship.  We could have had a small house for what’s its cost to build our shower block but then the eco element (complicated compost loo chambers, a roof pitched far more than is usual here to provide the right angle for the solar panels) is very important to us and in the long term will save us money … if we make it that far!

It’s a stressful time and we are having to be very involved in everything now as the inside of the building starts to take shape.  We have had to ask them to take walls down (the urinal wall was floor to ceiling when Steve turned up with materials the other day and it’s only supposed to be a half wall and the shower walls were planned to be much higher before we intervened) and move walls further out (the compost loo walls weren’t deep enough and the space seemed claustrophobic).  Here we are caught on camera by Nik in on of our many impromptu meetings with Miso…

Luckily my understanding of the language has come on in leaps and bounds since having Miso around (he speaks no English apart from the occasional swear word!), although sometimes we have to call Mil and ask for his help.  The problem is still talking back but I will work on this as soon as I have time!

Of course, we are trying to remain positive and there are many things to be thankful for.  The Mail on Sunday article is great timing and may send some bookings our way; our friends remain optimistic and supportive and help us in very practical ways – without them this would all be a lot tougher; people have been so generous donating tiles etc that they can’t use – this will help us save on materials costs.

In the meantime, now the shuttering is off the outside and the tiles are on the roof, the building is looking great…