The start....

Good news : our old house is sold !!!

We can stay there till the end of February 2010. Than we have to move...

Will the new house been finished that moment ??? We don't think so !!!

(Warning to our friends : we'll pocket your houses !!! We' ll stay over with you !!! ;)) )

But the contractor started the works : begin June they came with an enormous crane/drill to drill 24 holes into the earth (depth 7 m = about 23 ft). This 24 holes they've filled with concrete to stabilize the underground.

Do you see the workman ?

June the 19th they have finished the concrete floor. At first they did a great job to wave heavy iron for this floor. More's the pitty, but I didn't take pictures from this.

Last week, the weather was fine here in Belgium : no rain, a lot of sun,...

The bricklayers started their job and this is how far we are today : they already finished a part of the inside wall. After placing isolation against temperature and noise, they will make a second outside wall on the front with an old-looking brick.

(The yellow mats you can see on the picture is the isolation against noise).

We don't know how many time it takes in the USA to build a house, but here in Europe you have to count at least one year. Most of the houses here are stone houses. Exeptionally you can find here a wooden house, often used as a little weekend house.

We have decided to do the most of the finishing works ourselves. We would be nuts if we didn't ! Because of our Interior and Antique shop we can order/buy a lot of the finishing goods like floors, lighting, kitchen, bathroom furniture, etc. at cost price. or custom made by ourselves. ;)

But therefore I have to wait a little (?) bit longer, that's still the future. ;(

This was the start of the blog for family and friends..

So I started the building blog today. I had to learn a lot about it, I am still "green after my ears" what meant I have to learn a lot about this.....

tomorrow more news and pics.

This was the old mansion, I love it !!!!

But I think (know !) that we doesn't have that lot of money.

But I still love it...... and I will have the balcony !

This was my first message about the new house (facebook)

Building a house in Belgium. 1.


woensdag 4 februari 2009 om 20:46



Today we have had our information day about "environmental friendly" houses. Maybe our friends and family in the USA doesn't know, but our gouvernement find it very important to consider the environement. So do we...It is now about three years ago, that we decided to build a new house, next to our antiqueshop. It is in the adjacent village. Now we live still in Zwijndrecht, but the shop is in Melsele.We already sold the half of our house in Zwijndrecht. It sounds silly, but the half of the big, big house was our first antique shop. So we sold the shop-part and there is a very good restaurant now ! Now we only have to sell the house. Let's hope we soon will find a buyer !Finding the architect who understand what kind of style for the house, we desired was quite an adventure. The most popular house-style to build here in Belgium is the "parsonage-style". We like those houses, but it is not what we would build. Our dream (most of all mine, to be honnest) was an old looking European mansion.Puzzling the rooms, the stairway, the personal elevator (we are not getting younger, thinking on the future..), it took some time...But soon the contractor is going to start our dream...






This is the new style of an old European mansion, my dreamhouse. Ours will be in this style, but a lot smaller and not in such a lovely parc !