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So the last 5 weeks have been a bit of disaster with rooms going up and down like a lift in a japanese department store and now ceilings being concreted and then being cut out again. At last though things seem to be happening ,the roof is being cut the rubble thrown down for infill and then vangelis can come and flattend the ground ,push the soil back in to place and then the bullding can go to the next stage-Yannis and the bricks can arrive! but a lot of the process is being held up by mikhalis who sems to be going through one of his jack nicholson phases. as someone told me he’s ok as long as he’s only drinking beer! Anyway if he stalled more often he would look like Newmarket on race day and i cant A/. work out why and B/. get him to do anything about it! its very strange he has been off working on other jobs i know but he only has 2 days work at my place and i cant get him to finish. I make them turn up on sunday to prepare for mondays concrete pouring and they do on a staggeringly beautiful day 18c cloudless and still but of course there is a problem the machine cant turn up on monday (he hasnt booked it -mikhalis idea of forward planning is to get up in the morning and see what happens) it will be there on tuesday though which as long as the site is clear of all his wood,iron and rubbish for vangelis to flatten the land on wednesday there is no problem!I tell him if his stuff is still there on wednesday i will push it down the hill with the JCB, he gets the message and i do some olive tree pruning till i get too hot and go and jump in the sea which is still reasonably warm.! Of course by tuesdayits grey and threatening and with koshi we gather up mikhalis and take him to the land where things are progressing .The boys are cutting the roof out and ms lads are pouring the cement into the electricity post which we have to build. This requires a large scaffolding pole to be placed in the middle and i watch fascinated as they en group choose the most obscure and dangerous route possible, to achieve this simple task.Two of them stand on the upstretched digger bucket of the moving concrete maker with the pole like a battering ram and try and implale it into place while several other hang from the structure and try not to fall off/get run over/impaled by the post. it looks reminicent of the
triumphalist picture (doubtless set up) of the americans raising the flag in japan! Read the rest of this entry »

well the view of the house from the sea looks much better the upstairs bedroom is lower and looks much more in keeping its also clad in insulation which makes it even more ugly! its now a bombed out bosnian shell lookalike but it wont be for long.. Its been awful weather in skopelos after no rain(3 times) in the last year there been about a foot in the last month! so things have been delyed(!)greek buiders are closely related to london taxi’s in that they both disapear when it rains, but i rush up to the house eager to see the developments. When arrive though i have a strange feeling something is amiss. the up and down bedroom has aquired a concrete slab roof. i look at it and go for a walk around the house but when i return to look again its still there! which isnt suprising in itself but it shouldnt be there its an open beamed ceiling mirroring the living room -or at least its supposed to be. Eventually my addled brain accepts that there is in fact a bloody great lump of reinforced concret e where it shouldnt be. I send a slight murmmer of disquite via means of the speaking box around the island and over the water and lots of nashing of teeth ensues. It transpires there was an error on the original technical drawings but only on the one the concrete master has not our architectural ones.! soooooo its got to come down and it will indeed come down we are currently finding a disc big enough to cut through a reinforced 15cm slab and once more the hole in my roof will be returned!
everything else is coming on though but slowly mikhalis nipped off for a week to build a road which kept getting washed away- when it rains it really rains here. so we are now 2 months behind but i am going back at the end of this week and mikhalis is packing his stuff and yannis should be starting straight away. Had very good meeting with koshi and yannis and we went through lots of detail making decisions about lintels which will be chestnut, and doors windows stone finishes fireplace design etc and of course you now get an idea of the views this for instance is the view from the upstairs shower!

the biggest problem we face now is the pound euro exchange rate which has dropped like a stone on the back of the finacial crisis it will cost about an extra€10,000.00 at current rates which is great! still we can only hope it drifts back up .meawhile looking at the very first drawing koshi did for us reminds me of why…

So the kaloopie is now ready for the concrete to be poured and its the right height! looks much better than before ,more human in scale and less like a lighthouse,i should be passing it on the flying dolphin in the morning so i will try and take another picture of it a week after the last blog to see the changes.

Its great to be able to walk about the spaces and see how they will work ,despite the fact that the house is full of nails and pieces of wood and general debris its possible to get a feel for how it will be. and from the first drawing that koshi did to now -it starts to look something like its was intended to.As we are closing this part of the build we now have to paint the foundations with pisa (bitumen paint )and push the soil back around the building. this will make the building sit back into the landscape and enable us to do the exterior staircases .I am hoping that Mikhalis will be finished within 2 weeks and that we can get Yannis started at a run. Its still on the cards that the walls and roof will be on by xmas maybe even some of the window/doors.you never know!

Arriving back on the island sailing past the house i get a view from the water of the progress. Its nearly finished they have built the kaloopie for the second story and it looks ready to pour. but it does look big. I get to the port and meet Apostolos and he says Vangelis( back from his ABBA experience) phoned him to say the house looks like a 3 story! Something amis so next morning (today) i take Apo and Koshi up to seee the progress. It is obvious when we get close that the house is too big, much too big, The upper story is huge 5-6 meteres high not 3.5 like its supposed to be! Koshi points out this error to Mikhalis and lots of “o po po”-ing ensues and then quite a bit of top quality greek swearing and gesticulating. The 00 point from where the measure is taken is supposed to be the living room floor and for reasons that go beyond reason itself it was taken from the bedroom floor. Still no damage done the boys just have to remake the kaloopie 2.4 meters lower! this of course means that there will be yet another delay! another 3 days at least. I admit i have now run out of any further suggestions as to where the next delay will come from just when you think you are safe something even more bizarre and surreal throws itself into the pot.Its almost an artform in itself. The railways in the UK could learn so much from Greece about reasons for delays -leaves on the line-childs play! still we are only 4 weeks behind and i think we will pick up time when Yannis starts his work!

Just received some more shots from Skopelos. Koshi has been to the land and everything is going well the second story on the bedroom tower has begun and we can now see whay kind of view we will get from the upstairs rooms.It will be amazing ,there is a small window in the north wall which should give a direct line of sight to Mt Athos and the main windows look straight across to Alonisos. from the balcony on a clear day the view goes as far as Skyros and almost into Skopelos Town harbour.

The news that Apostolos has sold the beautiful stone house in the village means that i need to get back as i have purchased some of the furniture from this house. The lovely lady that owns it is British but married a Greek man and has lived in Athens since the sixties and she is going to Skopelos to deal with the house transfer. i need to find a storeroom to put the furniture until we are watertight. There isnt really a tradition of secondhand furniture in Greece, so i am lucky to have found this. I want the new of the house to contrast with the patina of age of the furniture where possible. I went to a “antique” shop in thessaloniki a few weeks ago with Nana(who has organized my house insurance) but the stuff was grim ,pricey and had been imported from Belgium! Its just one of those cultural differences that old furniture is usually chucked here as is achitectural salvage, we found 9 yards in thessaloniki dealing in such stuff but they were all rubbish, almost nothing at all worth having lots of nearly new stuff but little else.There may be a nice stone fireplace coming into one of them but i dont hold up much hope.
Next time i am in athens i must look around Piraeus i am told thats the place for old furniture but we will see. I just dont think they have the second hand bug like we do!

Back home in Norfolk at last after 3 weeks travelling,jet lag is fading,and more pics have arrived from Virgilios. Sorry about the scrappy nature of the last few entries but i have been running on empty. Now its time to take stock of where we are. Seeing the above pic tells me they are just starting on the second story of the bedroom/bathroom block. Mikhalis is standing on the living room wall where the chestnut beams will be and the other guy is on top of the kitchen which will be a roof terrace for the upstairs bedoom.
Mikhalis reckons that the wooden beams that will hold up the balcony on the front of the upstairs bedroom aren’t enough to take the weight.(it seems that often the technical drawings are a little off reality) and so we get a couple more small wood bars as he has to embed them into the concrete as its poured. Koshi also spotted the ceiling height is a little low on the staircase so an adjustment has been made.Apart from that all seems well. One of the biggest suprises to me has been how much of a movable feast the build is and one of the mistakes i made was not going through the plans in detail before they were submitted, I have learned so much during this build that it would be a shame not to do it again (one day). Although you are restricted to changes you can make once your permision is accepted there are many decisions to be made throughout the process, especially if you are building on a hillside ,i can now see why greeks tend to flatten the ground and build a square box when they want a house, its not just cheaper its so much simpler too. Anyway thats not what i am doing this house is more like one of those 3D.drawings where the staircase is an optical illusion was it Escher the artist? he obviously had the same point of view i do!.This is probably how it will end up!.
This first stage is nearly over and this has been the hardest part for us to do we have had problems which have cost money but they may in the long term create benefits. Really the major problem was the water tank-an intervention by an outside source who shall remain nameless-( now the only legal tank on the island!) and then the plans of the tank too were too big for its situation.Actually is a meter higher than it should be.Which means that we had to raise the other end of the house to meet the side where the tank is.This has cost money for the extra concrete ,extra infill soil and the extra work involved. However water pipe is slowly heading our way from Glossa ,the local town,and so in a couple of years the tank may become redundant and as its 8×4 meters so maybe something else could be done with it!. We also have built a large pool terrace and pool room that wasnt quite thought of before which has cost money but is an improvement, and of course the electricty poles, which have now arrived, cost more than i thought (bad research on my part) so i have basically spent all my 10% overspill budget and we aren’t half way yet!! I am making savings on the plumber and the electrician though, by using guys from Glossa rather than Skopelos its saving me a fortune, as in England they are the two hardest trades to source for a reasonable price. Also we are entering territory that i now know i have restored two house in England, one tudor,one victorian, so i know about lime ,bricks ,plumbing ,roofing, tiles ,stone and stuff but pouring concrete columns- I have been completely in the dark!
As far as timing goes the extra work has taken time-has the weather has and the ABBA-Tom hanks interventions and of course having a bulder hiding in the trees(see previous blogs) so we are now about 3 weeks behind my schedule,The official schedule for the mikhalis-yannis handover was to be 1 september but my secret schedule( known only to me dont tell) was 1 october. so i am not too diasapointed. There was a vague possibility that we would have the windows and doors in by christmas if we finished on or slightly before my schedule but thats not going to happen now. They need 2 months from the day when all the doorways and window holes are ready to be measured to make the windows and doors. I would think you could make the afformentioned wooden things and make the holes fit but thats not how its done here, holes first make the filling to fit! i always shy away from going against local tradition if i can its what they know its what they are used to doing and its probably the best way to go. Had a very interesting discussion with the carpenter about door jams ie the wooden bars at the bottom of doors set int the floor. A completely alien concept here where they just leave a small gap twixt door and floor, i think that lets in air and moisture they think door jams would make you trip up all the time! Vive la difference!
So in general thinks are good we have the main structure nearly finished, no major disasters, it looks great, the spaces around the house are working even better than i thought, everyone is happy and working well, only one person been a pain so far,its going to be a magical place and we will be finished in time for next summer……(I promise!)

the living room

view back up to the house from the beach car park.

well that came as a suprise! but i was about to put up the pictures from my greek trip the week before but the shoot in sweden delayed me- when up popped the house with height in my emails.hence the previous blog
I am now on route from Kansas city to detroit , it feels a long way from greece although i just had a taxi driver called johnny from larisa? who despite our common interest still managed to over charge me.
so the pouring of the slab of the swimming pool terrace is completed by squirting it through the crane pipe and at last i get to see what it will look like when finished

and its going to be fantastic. nice there is some water in there already! at least it shows up any leaks.
As we are on the land ABBAs boat sails by hopefully a sign that they are all leaving and i might get vangelis back again but no it proves to be that he is going with them to the pelion to finish their film there and we end up having to get Vs brother to find us a replacement guy to fill the soil back into the foundations so there will be something to pour the floor slab onto. we have to have 5 trucks of extra soil brought in to fill in especially under the kitchen,which we couldnt think of an alternative use for..
so as Vangelis is dancing around the pelion his brother who i have met several times(paniyotis? jet lag!) saves the day for us and the boys can get back on with the building

At last the first storey is visible. I am in Minneapolis airport just about to board a flight to kansas city so i will upload this now. Excitement!!! thanks to Virgilios for the pics! More when I get over the jet lag

At last it starts taking shape the main house is now there in metal work and the boys are starting the concrete today. of course manolis and koshi have independently gone and checked,that mikhalis’s wooden ruler is running true.I am back in the uk trying to sort out some work, this all needs paying for, and also had to give evidence at a European Commission thing in brussels on friday.Will pop back next week just briefly to check on everything and get a few more things together.For instance the supports for the balcony have to be fitted into the frame as its poured as do the waste pipes and the roof lights above the bathroom,everything else is for when the brick infill goes in.
At my meeting with Nicos and Vangelis last week(plumbing) they said i should build in a feed for mains water so they at least believe its a possibility that mains water will arrive in the Agios Gorgios area.of course i am not counting my jacuzzis before they are bubbling but… It would mean that the huge sterna(watertank) could in theory be converted to a room or even two rooms It leads straight on to the swimming pool terrace and its 8x4x4 sqm! that would be something, but not thinking of that yet.At least as its cost so much it could prove its worth, but i must also decide to put in a escape for the roof water in case it happens.It comes down to the sterna at 2 points so i will try and devise away of utilizing the 600 gallon plastic tank as a sterna lower down th hill and put in a “maybe”pipe down to it

this shows the bedrooms bathrooms part and gives an idea of what the views will be like also the step up to the right to the kitchen area is visable now.

this shows the kitchen in the middle ,well actually the cellar below the kitchen, the kitchen is at the same height as the terrace to the right! the tree has now become the pile of earth which now occupies the middle of my living room,bye tree(at last) and its all becoming real at last.
often in my work someone turns up with a sketch on a piece of paper and i have to make it happen for real ,this is a similar thing but its the first time i have done it and its exciting- and scary- already made mistakes ,but i will certainly know better next time-if there is a next time!
thanks to koshi for keeping her eye on things and for these pics!

Been an unusual trip .It started very well with the building and there was a christening for Babbis’s son which was a lovely event.He is an Albanian worker very good and efficient and a very nice guy and so i was asked along with Apostolos and Koshi to go to his sons christening and it was charming ,very unpretentious and with a nice atmosphere.His son ,who unusually is five years old, is stripped naked and annointed ,washed redressed and walked in circles around the font without a word of complaint.(Sort of childhood memory that has made many a Tory MP what they are today though!). We all then had an excllent albanian tchipoura(ouzo type) then went off for a feast of a whole roast sheep.Which was great,wonderfull hospitality

Then we had another heat wave and then we had a bit of rivalry between Michalis and Vangelis which made me have a stern word with M..Then we had a problem with the sterna size which has caused a problem with the levels for the house.Still no sign of the electricity company erecting the poles.People think i am on holiday when i am here! i dont want sympathy by any means but its not a holiday also having to eat out twice a day for 3 weeks is also a bit heavy,cant wait till i get my own kitchen! So the middle bit was a bit tricky but then we managed to sort the problems out the weather cooled down and the final bit was busy enough to keep me occupied didnt get to go swimming though! It was getting a bit odd the celebrity invasion was at such a level that i was going to the bank one day when james bond drove passed in a ferrari and i didnt even look.In fact it may have been a lamborghini! not exactly suited to Skopeliti roads though.Some high ups(no names yet) in the film are looking to buy houses on the island so i went out for the afternoon showing some of the nice places on the island land for sale ,houses etc and just got back 5 minutes before the wedding.! Tom and Suzanne bought a house from Apostolos 3 years ago and were getting married in the town hall, so i literally got changed in the car park as they approached down the hill
Apostolos was translating for the mayor during the ceremony and then the party was led off by the band around the paralia to end at Englazos’s for the reception. At this point we slipped away as we had too much too do.I had a quick shave and shower and we went to see the ladies in the beautiful stone house which Apostolos is about to put on his website to sell. I arranged to buy some of their furniture which will be great for my house, real old skopeliti style stuff which will contrast beautifully with the modern house. We got back to the wedding just as people were starting to leave and I think T&S hadnt realized we hadnt been there all the way through. Being clean shaven and with wet hair didnt even alert them but with the excitement and the drink i am not suprised! Glad to be leaving in the morning, ABBA are arriving for the wedding scene being shot at Agios Yiannis near Glossa and i think i have had enough ceremonies for the moment. As I go home bump into Colin Firth, Mr Darcy in Skopelos. Time to run!