The Golan Home

It’s now six weeks after we moved in and we feel at home. Most of what needed to be done after the move-in was taken care of – at least the important stuff: electricity fixes, master bedroom closet put in place, garden done, gas supply installed, the fence erected and the all important Internet hook up problems resolved.

Not all was done, and the teams still come in to wrap things up, some of them major. We don’t have lights on the roof balcony, the entrance walkway needs to be finished and… the list goes on. We have enough weekend projects to last us a year.

On top of that, Gali is so due that every little move of this unborn girl is very visible on her mother’s belly. It is probably just a matter of days until the baby is born.

What a ride it was and continues to be. The lessons we learned were immense – about handling such a project, the pressures and, most important, the human interaction.

There are so many people to thank, above them all, our architect Shimon, who never failed us. He stood by us through all the hardships and supported the project and us in his always gentle manner. Without him the Promised Land would have been harder to achieve, and never look as good and close to our vision as it does today. Thank you Shimon!

This blog will continue to run. I’ll update it on occasion, maybe direct it to a different path. We have a growing family after all.

May the coming New (Jewish) Year be happy, supply a fertile ground for growth, be a time of new beginnings, safe, challenging and full of love.

Stucco work started on the house yesterday and it looks awesome! White, with a very light texture. The stucco (or is it plaster?) guy did only had time to do the southern master bedroom wall and a little more after he finished fixing some spots in the house.

It was so beautiful, just as I imagined. It made me very happy.

Shimon and I also met with the tile guy about the walkway. After a second inspection, in decent light, it was obvious that it was not done right. At first, we discussed dismantling it completely and doing it from scratch but after discussing it with him we will try fixing it. Tests on Friday.

I spent the past week in Las Vegas covering a jewelry show, but work back home continued, with our architect Shimon emailing me the occasional progress photo. Only today I had a chance to see what was done, and so:

Tiling* work started in the yard on the north side of the house in the area that includes the walkway to the front door and the driveway. It’s a beautiful, unfinished, light colored stone, sawn into 7 centimeter slices.

We debated recently how to work out the change in elevation, about a meter (3 feet) between street level and the entrance. From the get go, when we were just sketching ideas, Yuval suggested a ramp that narrows toward the door so that when you turn to enter the house, it all opens at once, reveling the green backyard across from the living room.

The driveway, along the walkway, is at street level. Some of the stone was cemented to hold them in place, the rest, really wherever possible, was just laid on compressed turf. Later we will plant a small leaf crawling plant that will fill the gaps. This will happen on the north side beyond the entrance and at our bedroom walk out area.

Today, with it all built, I decided to test the walkway, going up the path, turning at the entrance with my eyes looking straight ahead. The genius of Yuval. The feeling was strong and accurate. Walking up creates a closing feeling and then, as you turn, it all opens at once. I’m so sorry that Yuval can’t experience it for himself and that we can’t thank him for his truly remarkable design.

The big story of the week was with the stucco guy. We are not continuing work on the final layer with the guy we started with but with someone else that costs much less and who is an expert in the particular material we decided to use. Monday morning Shimon was waiting at the site for the new guy – who didn’t show up. When Shimon called him he said he was told by the contractor we first worked with that the house is “his”.

It took a bunch of trans-Atlantic phone calls to work this one out. The poor guy was really bullied by the other and scared as well. I knew we would go through a bunch of new experiences building the house, but dealing with such a situation was not one of them.

On Tuesday he started working, fixing all sorts of little things like finishing the chimney, closing little holes and so on, and next week our house will finally turn from cement gray to clean and pristine white. It is almost time for a Hallelujah!

*not sure this is the right term