The House 14 Months On - Hitches, Glitches and Progress

At this point in the building of the new house it's important to retain a sense of perspective. I am also finding this to be quite a lot harder than I'd imagined.

If you buy an existing house, you buy what you see. You might buy something that needs no work at all and you can just move in and continue on with life. At the other end of the scale it may be a doer-upper with a process to convert it into the mental picture you had when you bought it. Either way, you have a rough idea of what's going to be involved.

In our case it is essentially the opposite and we're watching the slow process week by week and month by month. I can only imagine it to be like watching a factory build a car. When you buy a new car you are given the keys to a beautiful, shiny, new-car smelling dream. In the case of a second hand car you can still see the finished product. What you're not expected to do in this situation is to attend the production line to see exactly how it's put together. But curiosity, as in the words of Steven Wright, killed the cat (even if for a while I was the main suspect) and it is this, along with in most cases a significant financial investment, that forces us to go and take a regular look. In fact it reminds me a lot of knowing what the present is before it's wrapped and given to you.

Alternatively, and much more in keeping with human nature in this case, Albert Einstein pointed out that curiosity has its own reason for existing. That reason is to ensure, even without building, architecture, plumbing or carpentry experience, that you get to point out what's been missed. As a tradesman I assume that's what they live for, to have a layman point out that "you've missed a bit". I guess nothing makes your day more than knowing that Joe Public has his finger on the pulse and your best interests at heart.

That being said, there is always a period after the build called "snagging" where you get yet another opportunity to go around and point out all of the areas where the tradespeople "missed a bit". In our case we do seem to have had some aesthetically-challenged bods as you can see from the photos but all is being put right.

KITCHEN UPDATE
The kitchen is better news. We found out that the wall tiles that we wanted were out of stock in five places that we called. Then finally the sixth called back and confirmed that they had them and we can go ahead with the tiling on Monday the 18th of January. The kitchen equipment company are in the process of updating the CAD drawings and have confirmd that they can install once the tiling is complete anwe have the sink, hob, extractor and oven with them ready to be built in to the granite.

Next up are the wooden shelves and brackets....

The house....now 8 months on

There's a scene in the trailer for the upcoming Marvel superhero movie "Ant-Man" where the camera pans back from a dramatic train wreck, presumably involving our hero, to actually show the crash to be a child's 'Thomas the Tank Engine' set. It's very effective and evidently all a matter of perspective.

I had a similar feeling yesterday when Yohana and I went to check on the progress of the house. As those of you who've read the previous blog entries know, we bought the house from viewing plans and a model and it was interesting to get a better perspective.

When we bought the house we knew there was a small piece of land at the back of the house that we would eventually build on. The plans showed it as garden but it really isn't big enough to be that. The length of the house, hell the overall size isn't exactly what we needed, but the location and size of houses that we did want were outside our current budget so this was the compromise. Anyway, we knew that we'd eventually build onto the back but only really on seeing the show house did we truly realise the limited space we'd have to play with, especially in the kitchen area. So it was that Yohana and I started finding prices for the building of a small kitchen extension before the house itself is even finished.

First stop was the developers who are actually building the house and the rest of the cluster. It made sense as for one, they have architects and for two, they're in the middle of building the house! They were really helpful, especially considering that when we first bought the place they told us that small changes to the original design were impossible. Now they were happy to start knocking down walls and adding doors where previously a door couldn't be found. As it was a hypothetical situation we asked about a two story extension that would utilise the spare land at the back of the house. This would give us the extra space in the kitchen, a third upstairs bedroom, bringing the downstairs bedroom into the living room and adding a "maid room". Many families in Indonesia employ maids and whilst we don't have need for this facility ourselves, it would make the house more attractive if it comes to selling it in the future.

The developer came back within a few days to say that it would cost 30% of the original house purchase price. Considering it was giving nowhere near 30% extra size we thanked them for their offer and went away to rethink some stuff.

The culmination of the last few weeks of negotiation have been Yohana meeting with builders to discuss the work and negotiate the prices. The reason for Yohana doing all of this and not involving me in the meetings is trying to avoid 'Harga Bule' which loosely translated means 'westerner price' which sees everyone; contractors, retailers, street hawkers, inflate their prices when they see they're dealing with a westerner. The situation now is the contractor who is building the row of shops on the front of the cluster, as well as the cluster's communal swimming pool, is also building a one level extension to our kitchen and is working alongside the builders of the original developer from whom we bought the house in the first place. The added benefits are that the house will still meet the original December handover date, we won't have to start extending the kitchen after we've moved in, and the cost of the kitchen extension, including all tiling work, is 3% of the original house purchase price.

Pak Haji showing Yohana the kitchen extension while a guy makes what looks like a spear (seriously, it did)

To put the whole 'Harga Bule' thing into some sort of context, this was the first time I've been on-site in two months and while we were there we were offered many additional extras, some of which already come in the agreement! We did agree to a door which will lead to the space where a future maid room may be but which for now will be a small BBQ area and the upstairs above the kitchen extension will have to wait for a bit.

The difference between a house and a home is all about the people, the atmosphere and the decoration so we're now thinking a lot about that side of things (the decor, not the people) and anyone who follows me on Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) can see some ideas of things we like.

Here are some more photos taken yesterday....

Buying a house in Indonesia - 1. finding the right place

Yes we're finally buying a house. Not the Dream House on the Sumatran island beach, not yet. After almost two years of marriage the days of renting are soon to be behind us and, following a suggestion from a friend, I thought I'd use this blog to share the progression (or regression) that we experience from day 1.

Instead of beginning at Day 1, the story actually began about 8 months or so ago. The yearly rental on our current place was going to be up in August and we started contemplating buying something in Gading Serpong, the area where I teach. The main problem with this idea was that there was nothing within our price range that also met our criteria for the house, so with that in mind I guess what we were looking for is where we should begin.

Ideally we wanted a 2 floor house with 3+1 bedrooms and 3+1 bathrooms and for this we wanted to spend about 80,000 sterling pounds or Rp 1.5 billion!

• The plus 1's are maid accommodation and maid bathroom and are pretty normal in houses here in Indonesia where many families have live-in maids. Whilst not yet being a 'family', should we wish to sell the house in the future it would be necessary to include.
• 80,000/1,500,000,000 is a realistic figure for this size of a house. In some areas we could get a lot more for that sort of money.
• In Indonesia you are basically paying for the land and the popularity of the area in which that land is situated, so pretty much like everywhere else really.
• Foreigners are not allowed to own land. 
• This means that everything needs to be done in Yohana's name or if you were in a situation where you're unmarried you could split the ownership around random Indonesian nationals. 
• Deposits are usually 30% of the purchase price, plus initial fees for administration and bank charges.

 Saying all of that, our initial inquiries had shown us that the price range was always going to be iffy in the area in which we currently live. It's not just the fact that it is an up-and-coming area, rather it is one of the places to live outside of the city and one which has seen house prices more than double in two years, so we knew our work was going to be cut out for us. Knowing this, we had already started looking into other nearby areas such as Karawaci, Alam Sutera, BSD and Tangerang.

the greater Karawaci area

Needless to say after 8 months we were no closer to finding anything. We did consider a 'compact' house but once we saw a builders mock-up of a couple of rooms we both agreed it would have to be a bloody small cat that got swung around in it.

All of this until last week when a chance viewing of a website announced a new development about to be built in Karawaci. Not only was the price within our budget, Rp 866,000,000, the deposit was only 20% meaning that we had enough cash in the bank to do this.

the development brochure

You know those moments? The ones where you experience, feelings. Maybe the raising of the neck hairs when you sense trouble or, maybe for no apparent reason, a warm feeling of good fortune. Armed with the latter, and with only a small photo of an artists impression, we headed for Karawaci and the Binong 1 Residence development.

the design we chose

We knew we were going to have to make some compromises. There were 3 bedrooms but only two bathrooms, obviously a small price to pay. And there was no additional +1's for the maid. However there was extra room at the back of the property if we wanted to develop or add anything later. Finally, the big difference between this and another that was on display was that the kitchen was inside the house. As weird as that may seem, a significant number of properties situate the kitchen outside!

I'll leave this first post with some pictures of the model we saw and the land on which our house is about to be built

the eventual development