Sold!

As of December 18 we are land-owners.

I promised a long and winding road, and indeed it has been. I haven't posted because of increasingly volatile conditions up til December and because the cost of the land was so cheap, we didn't want to run the risk of someone snapping it up from under us.  We'd put in the hard yards to get it all subdivided and legally defined, we wanted to make sure it was ours!

Basically, a surveyor subdivided the land to match about the shape I outlined for you in the last post, making sure the property line was the agreed three meters away from the edge of the owner's terrace and the plot equalled the legislated 800sqm minimum for a building site.

Subsequently we had three lot numbers.

We went to the notary's office in April and agreed to purchase the land by August 15.

Why that date? Well, what we found out was that the owner was late with her mortgage repayment one month and was slapped a 100zł/day fine. Appalled, she decided she would just not pay her mortgage! So the bank decided to calculate what her debt on the properties we wanted to buy would be at her going rate by August 15.

So our notary agreement stated that of the agreed sale amoung, by August 15 we would pay to her creditor, another amount to another creditor (yes, she has multiple loans against the property) and the remainder to her.

However, the catch was that she had to get statements from her banks saying that if her debt was paid - and read not as paid off, but just to get her up to date with her repayments and cover the cost of fines - they would take the mortgage of the three properties we wanted to buy and only be for the remaining five properties created after the subdivision.

Come August 15, we didn't have these documents from her, and without them we were unable to get a loan from a bank for the purchase of our properties!

The clauses in the contract we weren't too stressed that the notary agreement was now outdated, because there was a clause in it saying she could not sell the property to anyone else for 12 months. OK, this is Poland, and such a clause is no guarantee, but we were in constant contact with her and weren't too stressed.

But week after week of "I should get it tomorrow", October rolled around and still nothing, and the situation was getting desperate.

She called us in to discuss.

We now found out that she was so in debt that they were going to cut off her electricity after the weekend and that a bailiff was going to seize some of her property to cover the unpaid taxes (how much financial trouble can one woman get herself in)!

We came to this risky agreement - we would give her a certain amount of cash to cover some of her debts in exchange for her putting our name in place of hers on the deeds. That would make us the owners of the property, but until it was paid off she was the creditor, so it was kind of a win win.

The day after we went to the notary to write up and sign this agreement, social security seized some of her property. We breathed a massive sigh of relief. Our three pieces of land were saved by that clever maneuver! Had we not had the properties in our name, they would have been taken by the bailiff and what bank would have loaned us money for the purchase of land seized by another creditor, and a government one at that!

However with good news came bad... we needed to wait for the courts to formally put our names on the deeds, then we waited, and waited, and waited for the court or local government or heavens knows which authority to make the three subdivided properties into one, with its own number and what not.

That actually took a really long time, but fortunately with the land in our name and finally with statements from the banks with December 16 promises on value of debt to be paid to free up the property from their creditorship, we had what we needed to satisfy the banks that we could get a loan.

We put our loan applications in to a bunch of banks, they took longer than they said they would to go through the paperwork so when one of them offered us a loan, we took it. Of course we would have preferred to wait for the offers to come in and pick the best one, but after two rejections we didn't wait for anymore offers, signed the paper work the next day, and we missed deadline anyway!!!

Fortunately, the creditor didn't charge us or the owner fines for another day's lateness on the repayment - I actually think they were glad to get anything on that loan at all!

And lucky for us, we don't have any more hoops to jump through and nothing else to worry about. They land is ours and the only debt on it is our own, regularly paid 30 year mortgage!

Negotiations

I haven't written for a while, but not so much has been happening on the home ownership/straw bale building front... until yesterday.

We met with the owner of the property I shared with you some posts back.Generally, the situation is such that she is in some financial trouble and needs the money from the sale of some or all of her property. Great for us, we negotiated the land at a bargain 276zł/sqm (compare that to the 500zł/sqm the neighbouring properties are going for!!) We also negotiated that the 760sqm on offer be extended to 800sqm, as this is the minimum council requirement for residential development. We had a good old time with a 30 metre long tape measure, negotiating how close to the existing building our property would reach and getting to visualize what will sometime soon be ours. Me, of course, in my "power suit" (I joke, but I was expecting negotiations over tea in her living room and not outdoors in the wind) and 7cm heels.

Here is an outline of what's going on with the property:

Basically, what you can see here is the current property (the big red box), a section of land already subdivided (smaller red box towards the front, brother of the owner of the larger property), green lines marking where our property lines will be, an access rode (marked in cyan, which will need to be extended to the second green line) some trees and neighbouring buildings. You've also got the longitude and latitude there, so you can check it out on google earth!

Now the long and winding road (thank you, Mr Lennon) begins.

Firstly, the owner needs to get a surveyor to mark out on council maps pretty much what I have done above with the green lines. Then the owner needs to go to the bank and provide me with their declaration that they will and can remove this piece of the property from the mortgage agreement she has with them. Finally by the end of the week, I expect, we will go to the notary, set out how we will go forward and make a down payment.

Then, the owner will apply to the council for the land to be divided as outlined by the surveyor, meanwhile she will also apply to council for a building permit for a small residential property towards the front of the land (front being nearest the street, next to her brother's house), as she won't be able to develop this land after subdivision - she will no longer have the required minimum 800sqm.

I don't know what else will need to be done. I hope that once we have architectural designs, which might be in the next 2 months, so before the subdivision and ownership procedures are finalized, the owner will apply  for a building permit for us, so it gets approved before the land is ours, and we can move onto the site as soon as its ours. It takes about a month to get the permit, so it would be nice to have when we get the property, rather than having to wait before we start developing our land.

So that's the long and incomplete version. For now we wait to sign notary papers, in the meantime, both our super friendly real estate agent and ourselves will be making notes of what should be included in this agreement.

Meanwhile, I've also found another potential source for straw bales. Early last year we found a farmer who could sell us bales from this years' harvest at 4zł a piece, and that's still current (note to self, should be calling him some day soon) but my husband's cousins fiance's parents also have a few hundred bales, very dry, from about 2 years ago, so these would be preferable. Also need to be calling him sometime soon to work out how many bales, what size, how tight they are and how much they might want for the bales (hoping for mates rates!)

More Purchases

As of less than an our, Husband and I are proud owners of some cast iron stairs from near Dover, UK, which will be coming out to Poland sometime next week, again, courtesy of eBay.

Watching those last seconds tick away on the auction and clinking our classes of red as the "You have just purchased" email came through were very moving moments for us, our build is getting really real.

Pressure is on to find a piece of land, get the architectural/administrative things underway and get this party started.

But I'll worry about that tomorrow.

For now, here is the new addition to our family ;)

Purchases

Our first home purchase has been made, and somewhat unfortunately, it was not land.

This may seem like a crazy and spontaneous purchase, but the truth is that Husband and I decided on two pieces of interest that we'd like to have in the house:
one, stained-glass or otherwise antique church window,
two, antique cast iron spiral staircase.
These were supposed to add interest and be our only splurges.

We came up with the window idea after visiting friends of ours in Australia. They have a beautiful home in Melbourne and their open living/dining area features very tall and very colorful church windows, which as I understand were also salvaged for the house build. They also had smaller church windows in another part of the house.

Can't remember where the idea for stairs came from, though.

Well, the first purchase, a window, has been done. A little different to what our friends have, it's etched, rather than stained, and considerably smaller. Both are attributes, our copy is original :P That is to say that we copied the concept but the final outcome won't be similar at all. Plus our house probably won't be large enough to accommodate multiple church windows, and we'll probably be limited to placing them in an interior dividing wall, as it probably doesn't have good thermal properties.

The best thing is that the purchase wasn't really a splurge, as we'd prepared for. There wasn't much interest in the eBay piece, we got it for only AU$182.62. It'll probably cost us that again to ship it to Poland, if not more, and there is the stress of getting it here in one piece, but fingers are crossed.

Now I'm looking at a spiral staircase and perhaps by the week's end I'll have the other purchase done, too. Then we get the land and build the house to put them in! Certainly all other purchases will be purely practical, as these are the only predicted unnecessary purchases.

Nunga Mai Nura

Nunga Mai Nura, to the best of my knowledge, is Dharawal for Dream Place and is/will be the name of our home.

Learning Curve

We've seen strawbale houses before, but in Australia, so husband and I went to take a look at a straw bale work in progress near Warsaw to compare how the technology holds up in this rather different climate.

As the technology remains somewhat experimental, its great to see how different architects, builders and owners approach both the limitations and the possibilities associated with straw bale.

The house we saw today in no way resembled the modest and square MS Paint-sketches I posted yesterday... A beautiful building is underway - but an expensive one too. Featuring curvy walls, one fully-windowed wall and wood singled wavy roof this is clearly a bale builder with cash to spare - unlike us. He also had the luxury of getting two architects on board - neither of them had previous bale experience.

Here's the house's website. It's called the Spiritual House

One of the great ideas the architects came up with - and the design is supposed to have magically revealed itself upon owner and architect during meditation - is a hollow masonry wall which is to absorb and radiate heat from the stove/fireplace throughout the center of the house (in addition to in-floor radiant heating).

Another was using logs and even trees for functional and aesthetic parts of the building - ceiling/balcony supports. Some of them were cherry trees that were being grown on the building site. A nice touch, I thought.

One of the worse ideas, in my opinion, was the excessive use of wood. A small forest was sacrificed to create not one, but two skeletal structures to house the bales inside the clay render. And in this obviously post-and-beam structure, wood was also used every two bale-heights for compression purposes.

Wood works great and is an obvious partner to straw bales, clay and in fact the entire building industry. But serving no other purpose than as slots in a giant straw bale version of "Connect Four" only to end up trapped behind 25 tonnes of clay render seems a bit wasteful.

I love working with wood and hope to be able to take some time off work when our build gets going to hand craft some sills and posts for the house. But I also hope that our house will have a much more modest construction and use much less wood, for cost purposes primarily, but also to show that a bale wall really doesn't need that much help from trees to keep it standing.

Last thing I wanted to say today was that, even with giant gaping holes where windows will go, unplastered bits of bale, an uninsulated roof and a bare concrete floor on a snowy winter day, the inside of this building was actually quite warm. Sure, my toes froze in my gumboots, but the rest of me was doing alright. I'm not sure if straw bales and clay plaster have any intrinsic warmth of their own, or if its just the cozy impression they give, but even bare and unfinished that house is doing well in this winter weather, kudos.

Planning

This morning I came up with a great idea...

But let's start at the beginning. Husband and I have been playing the planning game for some months now, as recommended in More Straw Bale Building. We've looked at house plans and realizations and considered what we do and don't want in our own home.

The planning game mostly concerns our downstairs, as upstairs will be a bunch of bedrooms and a bathroom, and we don't expect much more than functionality from them.

So downstairs, we wanted a mud room with adjoining wardrobe, a small bathroom/toilet, a very casual and fairly large living room space, a "formal dining", kitchen with an adjoining sunroom/breakfast area, and a spare room which, depending on need, can serve as a TV room, home office or guest bedroom. I always had a pretty good idea of how much space I'd need in these rooms and about the traffic corridors that would need to be considered. But how to put that onto paper always baffled me.

Now I am not an architect. So my thousands of sketches of floor plans rarely expand out of some square or rectangle. But even looking at ready designs online, I kind of had this idea about a kitchen towards the front of the house, with the living and dining areas lining the back wall - ideally, the south facing wall.

But I went back to the drawing board this morning, thinking about the uses of these places. I put formal dining in quotation marks before. That's because, rather than meaning formal in the way of fancy cutlery and chandeliers, I more had in mind the fact that this would be a single purpose room. The vast majority of family meals to be consumed in this house will be eaten in the kitchen or at the small table in the adjoining sun room - the latter is possibly an add-on in future or something we might get rid of altogether when we get closer to go time. We thought about getting rid of an official dining area altogether, because it would be so rarely used. But I cannot imagine my home being one in which I won't be able to host Christmas meals or invite friends around for dinner parties.

Time for the big reveal - if the dining room is to be so rarely used, why should it get south-facing windows!

Taa daa. Seems so obvious now. Can't believe I didn't come up with this so much earlier.

So now I have the planning game, with circles and squares indicating what goes where, drawn up in paint. I even took it further and started to draw in how I'd see the whole thing together.

In the top picture there are really only the rooms, mentioned about, in their rough configurations. The stairs marked in will hopefully be Victorian or similar reclaimed cast iron, and I actually pushed them out to the side a little thinking a bit of rounded bale wall would do nicely wrapping around the staircase.

So here's the plan.

Through the main entry way (perhaps double doors? Definitely some sort of reclaimed) there'll be mirror and side table to the left - mirror for dressing coats and scarves in, table for wallets and phones.

To the side is a wardrobe, with hooks and other steps taken to accommodate guests' coats, hats, shoes etc, and a cupboard for the occupants' things. I'd like to have this organized, so all the outer accessories are stored and put on here; gloves, shoes, scarves, sunglasses. There's also an ottoman on which one can sit to put shoes on.

As you go through the house, to the left (perhaps more straight on in the final version, as I'd like this to be the hub of the house and for traffic to be automatically directed this way) there is the living room. I predict a mish mash of furniture, I'm hoping for a hanging/swinging chair, maybe a chaise lounge, a couple of chairs and couches. Most of this should be light weight enough to be easily shoved around, closer or further from whatever. I'm happy for an anything goes feel in this room, and if, when entertaining, I get three or four circles of furniture going on as people group off to do their own thing, that'd be mission accomplished.
I'm also not a fan of the traditional coffee table, as it often results in banged shins for me, but I do like side tables and those old-school bars - all of which are light and mobile - so one could pull one up for their coffee and push it aside when they don't need it.

Through some glass bi-folds to the north ;) is the aforementioned dining room.
I'm thinking of putting a buffet in there, my grandparents one, if they give it to me. I was thinking of giving it a face-lift in the way of a new paint job. I was also wondering whether I should invest in a double aspect stove, that way on the (rare) occasion that I'm entertaining with a dinner, the fire can be enjoyed from both living and dining rooms. But this is probably unnecessary.
The point of the double bi-folds is also that, on those really rare occasions that there are like 40 people in the house the table could be moved to go through into the living room with another table or tables attached to the end to make it super long.
I'm Polish. Such events do occur.

You'll notice some lines representing steps. I was wondering if the feeling of "space" couldn't be achieved vertically. That is, rather than having a 20sqm living room, if I could get away with a 12-15sqm space that felt "spacious" because of high ceilings. I'd then go through and take advantage in the dining room, also. But this is unnecessary.

My kitchen faces south. Which is great. In all my previous sketches it was always where the dining room is now. But I spend so much time in the kitchen, it just be silly not to take advantage of warmth and sunshine and windows, which come with a southern aspect. And the sunroom/breakfast area I've dreamed about literally since we had one in the house I lived in at 9 years old will also benefit from this (in earlier plans it was west-facing). Kitchen pretty standard - sink, stove, dishwasher (?), pantry. Either an integrated fridge or an awesome Smeg retro looking one. I also love integrated ovens, but I was thinking of mounting mine in a wall, and not an excessively expensive kitchen unit (I'm hoping my kitchen cupboards will come from a junk yard or for near-free from a website) and having the surrounding wall made up of cubby holes with baskets of kitchen stuff. And lastly my kitchen trolley come island come bar. A must. I need one large, interrupted piece of counter top space for food prep. Years of living in cramped student quarters and shared accommodation has taught me that.

So we exit the kitchen, very quickly, and go to the sunroom. This is my one lux. room that we don't have to have in the house. It cooperates well with Husband's dream winter garden. Both can be treated as an add-on, but by building on the sunroom a bit two could become one. Question then is regarding isolating the inside of the house from the largely-glass room. But we're some way away from the stage of worrying about that... Really this paragraph just served as an explanation of those boxes and lines outside the perimeter of the house.

Next to the kitchen is a multipurpose room which I've drawn up as a TV room - definitely no TV in the living room!! A fold-out couch and some storage space will instantly make this room double as a spare bedroom, it will take a little more imagination to make it triple as an office - but both Husband and I are largely paperless, and one of those IKEA-fixes of offices in wardrobes or hallways will suffice.

Lastly, toilet and sink. Enough said. Actually, no - P-trap toilets (those hanging ones) for optically enlarging the room and easy cleaning, same goes for under-basin cabinet.

The stairs are self-explanatory.

Anyway, so my cousin the architect is going to be cranky that I'm trying to do her job for her... or she might be happy that her client knows what she wants? We'll see...

Financing

Yesterday I went to my chosen bank - the only one which, to my knowledge, offers loans in CHF (Swiss Francs) in Poland. It seems I've missed the boat - as of 2012 I'd need to be netting 15,000 PLN monthly, about five times what I make, to qualify for a loan in the currency. That means I am can only get a home loan in PLN, but my initial repayments will be at least twice that as with a loan in CHF, and I miss out on having my repayments cheapen significantly when the currently high value of the franc comes plummeting down - long overdue already. If I'd gotten the loan only three weeks ago I'd be laughing.

Never mind. The situation has forced me to rethink my plans. Previously, I was considering perhaps a large-ish property and a large-ish house with a few lavish luxuries. Instead, I'm thinking of applying for a much lower loan, just to cover the cost of the land, and building with the cash I have put aside - an amusingly petty 100,000 PLN inheritance and some 25,000 PLN in savings.

While I'd previously considered, for example, a polished concrete floor, I'm now thinking rammed earth or compressed clay or something. I'm also considering other alternatives that are even more budget friendly than what I was thinking of earlier...

I'll now be contacting my architect/cousin to get her thoughts on the issue.

Meanwhile, there is a plot of land in the area near Warsaw I was looking at. It's 760 sqm. I haven't seen the property yet, but a friend of mine dealing in real estate in that area will show it to me probably this weekend. She says I might need loose a bit of space, because I need to allow access to the property behind it, but the ad says it's already set back behind one property from the road. Either way, I'm enjoying the concept of having a neighbor buffering the noise of traffic for me :) I'll be sure to take some pictures when I do see the property. Hopefully it's a south-facing plot (though if not directly facing a road and lets say squished in behind other properties to each side, won't I be able to face a house any way I please?).

For now, here is the online ad for the property:

Genesis

I have just decided to start a blog. My first blog. Because what else should one do when they're avoiding tackling the growing pile of tasks and responsibilities while at work? Ok, there's probably a thousand other things I could do, and the one thing I probably should do is what my boss is paying me for. But as I've played enough tetris and solitaire to last me a lifetime, and the aforementioned work just isn't that much fun, starting a blog it is.

So I've never blogged before. Not too sure how its done. But seeing as how I'm a very curious person and when I read blogs I'm usually interested in knowing something about the authors, I guess I'll start with some kind of introduction.

I'm 25. I've been married for a little over a year. I live in Warsaw, Poland but I come from Sydney, Australia. I have a job - it's actually quite well paying by local standards. But I make in a month here a little more than I'd get in a week in Sydney.  Never mind conditions. Unpaid over-time is a fact of life, and job security is an unknown concept.

I live in a 38 sqm apartment - it has small rooms, a tiny kitchen and bathroom. For most Polish newly-weds - not bad.

But the apartment is rented.

And one of the rooms is occupied by flatmates.

Not uncommon for some Polish newly-weds. Except, I'm not a Polish newly-wed. I'm Australian. I'm used to space and bungalow living with a pool in the back yard. Heck. I miss that yard.

Not all will understand, but I've been suffering something akin to claustrophobia for the three years I've been living in Warsaw. It results from hearing the chronic coughing of some guy who lives three floors down, the incessant yelling of the dysfunctional family across the hall, the whirring of the drill as someone else renovates every Saturday morning at an ungodly hour, toilets flushing throughout the building... the list goes on. It also results from me not being able to play my instrument without someone banging on my door or wall (usually housemates, but sometimes neighbors) and the fact that I feel I need to walk around the house on tip toe so as not to disturb the downstairs neighbor. I'm never alone. In everything I do, somewhere not too far away, someone can probably hear me doing it. Sometimes I get paranoid and I think they can see me, too. It might not be that paranoid, seeing as sometimes I look into the apartments of the people living in the next building...

I remember visiting an aunt in Warsaw when on holiday with my family here nearly 20 years ago. She also lived in an apartment. I was about 5 years old, I wasn't allowed to run in her apartment, I was constantly being told to turn music down, not to jump up and down - torture for a little kid. Fortunately, I was there for one day. How my cousins grew up in that apartment remains a mystery. Poor, deprived children...

So what I'm getting to is that I've been spoilt by the good fortune of having been born and raised in the suburbs of Sydney and now I want to realize the insane dream of building a house near Warsaw.

Everyone here thinks I'm crazy. They're probably right.

Before the recession, my in-laws built something a little larger than what I need on dirt-cheap land and it cost them 600,000 PLN. (Remember my earnings?)

But, even though I'm no eco-Nazi, I do find that modern-day building practices are unnecessarily energy-intensive and largely wasteful. I'm also a tight-arse and traditional construction materials are totally over priced. For over a year now I've been doing my research and I've decided to build a house almost entirely out of used and recycled materials. The only "new" materials, I hope, will be straw bale and clay walls.

I also hope that I'll finally be able to convince one bank or another for a loan, preferably in Swiss Francs, to the value of 400,000 PLN, of which 50 per cent should get us anything between 500 and 1,500 sqm of land.

In the past year, I've read Straw Bale Building Straw Bale Building and More Straw Bale Building (among others). I've intensively researched local real-estate and have decided on where to build the house. I've researched where and how much I can get most building materials for. But nothing has come to fruition yet. I'm not even approved for a loan!

But that's all going to change. 2012 is the year in which I will become a home owner.

Here's what I've got so far:

1. My cousin, an architect, very liberal and experimental in her approach to everything and very similar to me in what I like in architecture, has promised to design the house for me. I'm 99 per cent sure that when the time comes, she'll be true to her word.

2. The land will be in the warszawskie-zachodnie powiat (county), in Łomianki,to Warsaw's NNE, on the left side of european route 77 as you travel north. The region is unlikely to become much more build up as it is bordered by the Vistula river to one side and the protected Kampinos forests to the other, which was important in making the decision, as morning traffic into Warsaw is more than a nightmare, and if it were to get worse... I'll show you pictures sometime
Furthermore, the area closer to the river carries with it the (expensive) need to consider drainage, is prone to flooding, is often infested by mosquitoes and is strangely popular among home builders which is of course driving up the price of land, I think the building closer to the forest will be cheaper overall.

3. I've sourced my straw bales! I have made a reservation for this year's bales, some farmers 30km north of Warsaw have promised to bale them up as tight as they'll go and will also hold their neighbors bales for us, just in case. The price of bales went up recently, as I'll be competing with strawberry and potato growers who use the straw to insulate their crops over winter. I will still be looking around to get bales closer to the area and perhaps cheaper. There is a lot of cereal growing in the area and Polish farmers are largely traditionalists, likely to burn giant piles of straw at the end of harvest, so perhaps I'll get onto someone who'll be willing to palm their "problem" off onto me.

So that's where I am at currently. Very beginning stages. But the plan is to set wheels in motion ASAP and I hope this blog will reflect that with regular updates and news.

I'll also be posting in Polish - or have my husband do the translations - as this should one day be a very useful guide to very many other young (and not-so-young) Polish people looking to build without breaking the bank.

As such, I encourage getting an RSS feed of this, digging, following me on flickr (once pics start coming up) and youtube (once videos start appearing).