Raising the roof................

Well as John and I get wrapped up in the UK, against the snow and ice;  its a totally different outlook in Resadiye, Datca.

The stone masons have been busy building the walls around house and this has been no mean feat, judging by the photo's!   Here are the latest photo's taken on Friday 3rd December.

Front with new terraced garden

Workmen finishing the roof terrace on the right handside

View through the Olive and Almond trees

Land at the front of the house, first terrace

Walls in place around the property

Side View

Rather high walls !!

View from the back of the house

When I got these photo's I was totally stunned by the transformation of the land and the house, it really is turning into our dream house and more than what we had hoped for when we decided to invest in property in Turkey.    

Wee house on the hill.........

Well, not really a hill, but the house is really coming along now, and you can see the shape and make out the rooms now as well.

Here are the latest photo's as of Saturday 20th November;

Wall at the side of the house - in progress 

View from the back of the house

Front Door with Balcony above on 1st Floor

1st Floor, needs the floor boards !

Front of the house, windows on both floors

The Neighbourhood

View from the right handside, bathrroms and second bedroom

The weather in Datca is around 20 degrees centigrade at this time of year, so pleasant for walking and sightseeing around the beautiful peninsula which sounds very favorable in comparison to the UK, where we have current forecasts of snow, wind, ice and rain and the average temperature being just 6 degrees centigrade !

The plan is to get the house roof and floors completed and to get the walls finished around the property, so it can be made watertight and safe, for the coming months.

We hope to have the house ready for furnishing April/May 2011, and have already booked 2 weeks in July 2011 to experience our first holiday in the house.   Can't wait !!

Happy Bayram...................

Happy Bayram / Eid to everyone celebrating at the moment.  Kurban Bayramı is a religious festival and is celebrated throughout Turkey with a 4/5 day public holiday.   Its an important time for taking in what is going on in the world and appreciating family and friends. 


No more photo's of the house just yet, but some expected very soon!!!

Great Wall of China - not quite!

Juts recieved some more photo's from our project manager Serkan, they are getting ready to start building the walls around the property.  Take a look......

Levelling the land round the house

House on the hill

Work men finishing the stone work

Serious earth moving

Boundaries of the property

Measuring the boundary for the wall

Ready to build wall, putting in tie line

Taking Shape.....

Well, the build of the walls and fireplaces is nearly completed.  Here's the latest photo's, taken just yesterday.

The next work will be to start the walls surrounding the property, which will be in the same stone as the house.

Side view, near front entrance

View from one of the Kitchen window's

Kitchen with door leading onto the roof terrace

Living room with archway through to Kitchen

Side View

Entrance and Veranda

Front of the house

Back of the house

Onwards and going Upwards............

Just recently back from a week in Datca, the house is really coming along now, have a look at latest photos. We have been promised new photo updates every week, so will be able to add these more often as things progress.



Front of the property



Stone work is all done by hand inside and out, with reclaimed timber over the windows and doors.



Inside of Bedroom 1

First floor has wooden floors, you can just see them on this photo. This is looking out from bedroom one to the study at the front of the house.

Side View - door and window of second bedroom



Fireplace in the second bedroom

 

View of the inside of bedroom two

 

There is still a lot of work to do, and the main priority now is to get the first floor finished and the roof on to make the property watertight for the winter months. The boundary walls will then be worked on, again using the same stone to match the house.

Need to start thinking about the interior soon, kitchen is going to be made and materials all sourced locally, spoilt for choice with the quality and choice of natural materials available in Turkey.

Our project manager, Serkan knows exactly what we want and is really making the project a pleasure to work with him on.  Before we left Datca to come home, we drove over to Mesudiye, a village about 30 mins drive from Datca, to a villa that Serkan, our builder and project manager had recently just finished,  its called Villa Olivio and it looks lovely, so can't wait to get ours finished ready for our holidays next year.

Grand ideas and designs.........

We were recommended a local architect, who we met with, discussed our vision for the restoration and agreed costs for drawing up the house design and project plans.   Three years on... and we learned that restoring a property is more complex and takes more time to get signed off than new build projects.  I must say during this time I did question my own sanity,  wondering why we hadn't just settled for an apartment instead.

Anyway, over the three years we worked with the architect to ensure that the final plans would be as sympathetic and as close to the original building as possible, using the same materials and keeping pretty much to the same layout.  The plans were submitted and discussed at the head office in Mugla on several occasions over that period, before we finally received a call to say they had been passed and we could now start the build.  Elation and panic, omg it was actually going to happen......

Our inspiration for the design, came from numerous places, the village itself, as it is a gorgeous place with traditional houses, a beautiful Mosque, friendly residents, not to mention the Mehmet Ali Ağa Mansion Hotel  recently restored and locally known as “Kocaev” (big house).

How did this happen then........

Yikes, sorry its been a while, got a lot to catch up on, as promised here's a bit of info on how we got to this stage.

Before we could start our restoration project in Turkey, we had to buy the land, as Turkey is not in the EU (yet!) there are restirctions on where foreign investors can buy land and or property.  There's more info here on Buying in Turkey here and also on the Channel 4 site.

It turned out that we had choosen to buy a property owned jointly by four people, (children of the previous occupants), who had all moved away to other areas, so in order to buy the land we had to get in touch with each of them to agree a price. Our turkish friend acted on our behalf throughout this process, (we gave him power of attorney), this involved seeing a turkish solicitor and drawing up the papers and registering with the local notary office.   Eventually a meeting was arranged, with the current owners and after a lot of negotiation, the land was finally ours.  When you buy a house/land in Turkey you should expect to recieve an official document called a Tapu these are your title deeds.

You do need to be aware that there is a lot of administration, time and costs involved in the process, and you really do need to have good solicitors, agents and translators that you trust to guide you through and explain everything, as its all very different to buying in the UK.  

The build begins....

So work has now started and when we last visited  at the end of May we had quite a surprise!  The original old ruin was gone and in its place the start of new foundations.  Below are some pictures of the build in progress......

Me with our two friends both called Serkan (project manager and estate agent) 

The steel rods are placed in the foundations

Finishing off the criss cross layers of the steel rods

Digging the trench for the waste pipes

The stone from the old house

Foundation stage complete

The foundations are done in this way due to the risk and frequency of earthquakes in the region, and all builds must meet this strict build criteria. To get to this stage took three years and a lot of discussion with our architect and construction project manager. There are a few things that you do need to know before thinking about building your own property in Turkey and I will post some links and more info on this and how we went about it in my next post.

Villa Restoration in Turkey - Why Not?

Merhaba!  This is a blog all about my experience of buying and building a property in Turkey. I hope you find it interesting.

Why Turkey? Well we have always loved the country, the culture, the history, the people are friendly & warm, and the food is fantastic and with 300 days of sunshine - what more could you ask for. I should also add that my dad is Turkish, and I have a lot of family there too, so it feels like home, whenever we visit.

We had been thinking of buying something for a while and started looking properly just over three years ago. We got in touch with a Turkish estate agency and arranged to have a look at a few properties during our next visit. The agent Serkan collected us from our rental villa in Dalyan and drove us all the way to the beautiful peninsula of Datca. We fell in love with the area and its charming harbour and hideaway beaches.

It took us a few visits to find our dream property, but we knew when we saw it that it was just perfect.

So we bought the land and after a few years of waiting for planning permission; work started in May 2010 on rebuilding and restoring the house back to its original condition.