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I'm building a house. This is neither a figure of speech, nor some
geeky jargon to obscure the point. I'm speaking about a real house
like those where people live in:
People construct houses as dwelling-spaces for human
habitation. Such dwellings generally feature enclosing walls, a roof
and one or more floors. This overall structure provides shelter
against precipitation, wind, heat, cold and intruders [...] The house
often provides a permanent residence for a family or for a similar
social unit. When occupying a house routinely as a dwelling,
English-speaking people may call this building their "home". People
may leave their house most of the day for work and recreation, but
typically return "home", to their house, at least for sleeping.
-- From the Wikipedia
entry on houses
Yep! It will have all of these: Walls, a roof, more than one
floors, the works!
After about 15 years of living in the same 65 square-meters flat
down-town
in Athens, I took the big decision to change place of
residence. Initially I thought that buying a new, spacier apartment in
a decent neighborhood would be the most economic way to go. After
asking around, and after doing some rough calculations, it became
obvious that building a house---in a lot my brother and I had
inherited from our mother---would cost about the same and the result
would probably be much better.
The lot is in Nea Penteli;
formerly a village sitting on the slopes of the Penteli mountains. Now
Nea Penteli has become a suburb not too far from the center of Athens,
especially given the very good access to Attiki Odos ring
road. The area is still surrounded by a lot of greenery (mainly
pine-trees forests) and is quite agreeable. The exact coordinates are:
38o 03' 27.36'' N
23o 51' 01.00'' E
Elevation 352m
(you can easily find it in
google maps. It's the empty lot on "Digeni Eoka" street, third
from the intersection with "Neas Pentelis Ave"). The postal address
is:
Digeni Eoka 24,
152 36 Nea Penteli
Attiki
The total area of the lot is 400 square-meters (20 by 20). The
building code allows a coverage ratio of 0.4 which together with all
other rules and regulations results in a a total of about 300 square
meters in two above-ground floors. Since my brother owns half of it, a
single building will have to incorporate two residences, 150 square
meters each. Constructing two independent buildings is economically
out of the question, and also probably impossible due to regulations.
I'm new to all this construction business, but the consensus among
friends who have done it before seems to be that in each and every
stage---even if you take for granted an engineer that oversees the
project, and whom you can trust (something that is usually not so very
much granted)---even then there is an enormous amount of work for the
owner.
Currently works on the concrete frame of the building are almost
finished. Soon brickwork will begin, after cleaning up and leveling the
surrounding area. If you are curious you can take a look at the
floor-plans for the ground-floor, the
first-floor,
and the basement. All
plans are in 1:75 scale and were prepared by yours truly using the
very nice, open-source program QCAD. If you see
anything flaky in them (like "oh my God, the elevator door opens in
the bathroom!"), please point it out. Maybe there's still time to fix
it.
I'm thinking of occasionally reporting here on the progress of the
construction, as well as on experiences gained from it. I'll tag the
relevant entries using: "hacks/house".
I hope next time I also have some pictures to show you. |