The Golan Home

I was a way in Hong Kong for the week. While away, the second floor has been almost completed: the “Captain’s” room walls, library, gallery, etc. That included everything but pouring cement on the roof. Even the preparatory wood work was done.

Also while way:
The columns for the fence facing the street were done,
The support pipes that held the ceiling while drying were removed as was the wood work,
The outer wood work was also removed,
the first row of blocks marking the inner walls was put in place.

The result was that when we arrived Friday, just a hours after I landed, we could see, well, our house. Its outlines clearly there.

The photo on the left shows the house from an angle that I don’t often shoot at. The wood beams above the windows are visible.

Admiring aside, an important task waited – approving the location of the inner walls. We debated some about the guest bathroom (shrunk it some), the kids bathroom (left unchanged), the master bedroom (enlarged it a bit at the expense of the adajcent bedroom) and shower (widened it and changed its layout).

Luckily Shimon and Hosam were patient with us. Moving ahead

Well, maybe not as much life as in height. Second floor walls were at full height this morning, with Hosam and Basam’s team putting the wooden frame work in place for pouring the columns.

We are very happy with the progress they are making. Not only is everything done on time, but it’s also done well and they are nice folks as an extra bonus.

During the extended New Year weekend we went through piles of magazines we kept with earmarked pages and little paper markers with ideas wanted to keep in mind for the house.

We re-examined everything, tore out the pages that were relevant and cut that pile down from over a foot to less than half an inch.

The benefit – a concise idea of how we want to proceed with the kitchen, ceramics and more. On Friday we are meeting with Shimon on all of this to get his input.

It’s a holiday in Israel – Jews are celebrating the New Year, Muslims the first day of Ramadan – and all is very quiet. All three of us went to see the house after work on the first floor ceiling was done.

It’s really shaping up. It was easy to imagine how things will shape up and judge if some of our plans will workout.

Work on the second floor room started and we have cinder blocks all the way up to the windows. On Sunday I’ll order four more beams for the lintels.